[Mariner]

"Nothing they did to us was really torture by any real definition of the word"

Read my post #28 and tell me how you would characterize that event.

[kabar]

I read and don't agree with the VA judgment. During my SERE training, three out of 72 were broken and it was being placed in the footlocker sized box for an hour that did it. Claustrophobia was something that it is very difficult to overcome even in a circumstance that you knew that your "captors" would do no permanent harm. Everyone has a breaking point or phobia that can be used to break you. Citing one rare reaction to water boarding out of the tens of thousands who have gone thru it without such a reaction proves that it is not torture.

I don't consider something that is done to our own people as part of training, as torture when done to the enemy. It was done under controlled conditions with medical personnel in attendance.

WWII was the last war we have been involved in that threatened our very survival. We fought to win with the objective being the unconditional surrender of the enemy. We killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civilians including women and children. The fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo were designed to kill as many as possible. And so were the two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

We have created the expectation of antiseptic wars with little or no collateral damage. We go to extreme lengths to spare civilians even it means placing our own troops at greater risk. We have this luxury because of technology and the fact that our very national survival is not at risk in these conflicts like it was in WWII. That could change very quickly if the terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon inside this country or launche a biological attack that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans. We will then become more concerned about the welfare of our own citizens than the "rights" of the terrorists.