Those who protest this would rather have had the dozen or so attacks happen than this terrorist receive 35 seconds of discomfort.
Don’t give me that “we’re better than this”.
What’s worse?
35 seconds of water up the nose to save thousands of civilians’ lives?
The razing of Dresden?
Two A-Bombs on civilian population centers to end a war?
I hate getting water in my nose when I’m swimming. It’s happened a couple of times.
As a result, I’m still alive and well. Yes, everybody has a fear of drowning, but it’s done in a controlled environment.
Let’s try this approach.
In a situation where the interogators feel that simulated drowning is warranted to get someone to talk — only in the event of saving a number of lives, for example to extract information on a terrorist attack . . . . tell the perp up front that this is a simulated drowning. That he will not die, but he will think that he is going to die.
Then proceed with the waterboarding. If the guy knows intellectually that he can survive, it won’t be a life-or-death decision. The perp can decide if he wants to talk or not.
I don’t have any problems with torturing terrorists. I think we should threaten ‘em with sex-change operations - threaten to send ‘em to Allah as women. And if they don’t talk - do it!
what the naysayers fail to realize is that even if the bad guy lies about intel to get the ‘torture’ to stop, the most important effectiveness is when you go back to him with his lie and do it again. He knows what’s coming.
Wearing a woman's panties on my head?
>>Those who protest this would rather have had the dozen or so attacks happen than this terrorist receive 35 seconds of discomfort.
Don’t give me that “we’re better than this”.
What’s worse?
35 seconds of water up the nose to save thousands of civilians’ lives?
The razing of Dresden?
Two A-Bombs on civilian population centers to end a war?<<
In an isolated case where a known terrorist is known to have knowledge that would stop an imminent attack and there would be no repercussions, of course I’d support torture.
In practice, once torture is authorized, it is used to see what can be extracted. It winds up being used on people who don’t have imminent information. And it sends the message the the U.S. are no longer the good guys. There is no telling how many lives and how much suffering that may cost in exchange.
The problem is that once you allow government to start making that kind of calculation, it will enver end, and they will rarely decide wisely. If this accepted today, 30 years frmo now government will decide which government-controlled health care patients can be left on life support and which will be unplugged against the patient’s and family’s wishes, in order to save money that can be used to pay policemen and firemen, or to pay for pollution standards upgrades for a factory, etc, any of which would save more lives.
Giving government any more power over life and death decisions, especially without the triple redundancies inherent in capital trials and appeals, is a terribly bad idea.
Dresden accomplished nothing.
Most of the bombing accomplished nothing.
Defeat was accomplished by Willie, Joe, Tommy, and Ivan
in their muddy boots.