JasonC - your “outrage” is ridiculous.
You try to claim a moral high ground by claiming that certain techniques are “torture” - but when you read what was authorized - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - it is absolutely absurd to consider them “torture”.
If the enhanced interrogation techniques ARE considered torture - then the word torture is totally without meaning!
You - and the left wing radicals would have us give the terrorists tea and crumpets - speaking loudly to them would be torture.
Absurd!! In WWII - the Brits had captured German spies - and the spies were told to submit to special deception techniques - or be summarily executed as spies. (A few spies refused - and they were executed, with other spies being able to see what was in store for them if they failed to assist.) Such tactics would be against the Geneva Convention FOR captured soldiers - but spies and terrorists operate outside the law, and therefore do not get any legal protections.
Yes - the left hyperventilate againt the abuse of putting a captured terrorist in a small box with a ...gasp gasp - catepillar in the box also ....but most rational people recognize that with an illegal/immoral enemy, additional actions must be taken.
Again - WE DID NOT TORTURE. We used ENHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES. But if you disagree with me - then your dissent is antognizing me and that is torture to me, and you therefore must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the crime of torture. </sarcasm> If torture can be redefined by others, surely I can re-define torture to include everything that the liberals are doing to create a socialist/statist country.
The liberals who would attack those who protected our country are just like the Animal Liberation Front people who would attack and kill those who don’t embrace their vegan lifestyles. They have elevated the importance of animals and therefore have lowered the value of man. The liberals have elevated the rights of terrorists - and have therefore de-valued the rights of citizens to live in a country and be protected from attacks. That means Honor is a meaningless concept to JasonC and his friends.
Second, of course waterboarding is torture. It was invented by Chinese torturers and practiced on our men in Korea and Vietnam, and we prosecuted people for war crimes for doing it, when we could. It was added to sear training as a mild taste of the torture captives routinely experienced at the hands of barbarians. The men who implemented it did so *as* torture. It is of course much milder when brief and the subject knows friends not remorseless enemies are doing it and will soon stop. But it is torture and everyone who wants to use it, knows it is and claims it is "effective" precisely as torture. If it were poking with soft cushions, no one would defend it as effective, would they?
You simply may not seek victory in war by making your captives as uncomfortable as possible. The means and details are quite immaterial, you can't seek the end. You can offer leniency or preferable treatment or release in return for cooperation if you find it useful. But captives are free moral agents and not sacks of meat for you to tenderize. The war will not be won in a torture chamber. It may well be lost there (France's in Algeria was, for one), but it can't be won there. It will be won only out where there is honor, on actual battlefields.
And no, torturers are not protecting the country. They are attacking it and covering it with their moral slime. They belong in jail, but I'll settle for simply running them out of any office or position of trust or responsibility.
And this has nothing to do with any terrorist's rights, it has everything to do with mine. You are not authorised to torture human beings in my name or claim to be doing so on my behalf. You are my enemy and not my countryman, if you defend barbarism. If you torture anyone, it is as a self appointed tyrant and illegitimate; you have no commission to do so from the American people. Your crimes are yours and not theirs, and nothing you say or do will make us support you in those crimes.