…is the family of the individual circled below. Never forget the work of the so-called ‘torturees’:
So another individual (one of scores) films himself being waterboarded… and yet he can sit up an talk about it immediately with no physical effects. Unquestionably unpleasant, as the hundreds of American service personnel who voluntarily go through it as part of their training can tell you. The technique was applied to a total of three individuals with immediate and detailed information on pending terror attacks that were stopped (and, of course, the Obama administration refuses to release the details of that).
We do know that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and various foiled attacks.
But, it it makes people ‘feel better’ make it illegal with a very specific punishment. If I’m an intel officer and got my hands on KSM or the other two, you can bet I’d do exactly the same thing to them. Then I’d plead guilty to whatever charges are involved, then submit my reasoning during sentencing and pretty much dare them to throw the book at me. The argument being; if sitting in jail for a couple years saved hundreds of people, would it not be worth it? People risk their lives for much less.
UPDATE: BTW; Obama has decided ‘not to torture’ by outsourcing it to other countries; essentially, Rendition, but suddenly it won’t be called that (because the media’s darling in the White House can do no wrong).
Filed under: Philosophy, Politics
I wonder how effective something is, if it had to be done 183 times to a single person.
We could find out, Fooser, if Obama would release the right memos. Unfortunately, those memos won’t support the appropriate narrative.
How much info at a time can you get, when someone has spent well over a decade plotting attacks?
BTW: Obama- for all of his posturing- is only outsourcing the interrogations. You know, to the people who’ll use hot pokers and the like. I prefer waterboarding over skin peeling on strictly humanitarian grounds, myself.
Our government leaders are the ones who need waterboarding.
Waterboarding is torture.
But I do know that our Federal Government is doing it’s darndest to take away our Liberty and trample the COTUS underfoot.
Here’s a link to an article on torture it would do good for all of us to read. http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance172.html
‘Our’ liberties? Sorry, Benjamin, but none of the terrorists involved are U.S. citizens, nor made it to U.S. soil (not yet). You’re a big fan of not forcing ‘American standards’ to the rest of the world, so ‘our liberties’ and our U.S. Constitution are not really applicable here, are they?
As for your article on torture, not one of your morally permissible questions actually applies to waterboarding, do they? No disability, no death, no women, no children and no ‘any means’. Do you even read your own references? And the reference of it serving as a recruiting tool is laughable, considering what these particular Muslims have always done to their prisoners, well before any of this camew about. They are the same people who riot about teddy bear name, political cartoons and uncofirmed rumors that a Koran got mistreated. What they do use the stories for is to get sympathy from soft-headed buffoons.
Everything with government happens in a slow progression. We didn’t get this huge state overnight did we? Let’s nip this torture thing out before it goes anywhere else.
Sorry, Fooser; this ‘torture’ thing comes up- and is used- in every war we’ve ever fought when the circumstances warranted it. It just was never discussed openly before the ‘modern’ era. To ‘nip it’, you’d need to go back a couple hundred years
Most of the ‘torture’ technique listings include loud, annoying music and sleep deprivation. My son has three years of that down pat from his college dorm
This is not about water-boarding, it has never been about water-boarding. This is about a tactic the Bush administration used to gain information to protect us. If the Demos had been in power and did the same thing the question of torture would have never come up. This is a ploy by those on the left to deflect attention from other things. Believe me the leaders on the left do not believe water-boarding is torture. If some do then they are greater fools than I previously imagined.
You mean strapping someone down and drowning them doesn’t sound anything like torture to you?
You mean strapping someone down and drowning them doesn’t sound anything like torture to you?
Well thats interesting! the last time I checked people who get ‘drowned’, DIE. Whats the body count on waterboarding again?
‘almost drowning’ them may be more appropriate words.
Not even ‘almost’. True ‘almost drowning’ often does a fair amount of damage from oxygen deprivation. This is ‘simulated drowning’; definitely frightening, but not physically damaging.
What is “simulated drowning”? You’re either drowning or you aren’t. In this case you’re drowning but it is stopped before you die. There are a number of psychological and physical effects possible:
“Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated “a number of people” who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states, “[He] argued that it was indeed torture, ‘Some victims were still traumatized years later’, he said. One patient couldn’t take showers, and panicked when it rained. ‘The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience’, he said”.[6] Keller also stated in his testimony before the Senate that “water-boarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over their face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD. I remind you of the patient I described earlier who would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained even years after his abuse”.”
When it seems like your drowning but your not. Where the ‘terror of death is pervasive, with all the physiologic and psychological responses’ as it would be if one were actually drowning, only they are NOT actually drowning…
Yep and the 3 terrorist who were waterboarded weren’t drowning soooo…
Guess you don’t have that waterboarding body count. How about any medical records of treatment for any ‘heart attacks or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water’ for these guys? Anyone? Have there been any reports of either of the 3 waterboarded terrorist suffering from even the mildest panic attacks when the clouds loom over Gitmo?
Definition
Near-drowning is the term for survival after suffocation caused by submersion in water or another fluid. Some experts exclude from this definition cases of temporary survival that end in death within 24 hours, which they prefer to classify as drownings.
from answers.com
from dictionary.com
drown
/draʊn/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [droun] Show IPA
–verb (used without object)
1. to die under water or other liquid of suffocation.
–verb (used with object)
2. to kill by submerging under water or other liquid.
3. to destroy or get rid of by, or as if by, immersion: He drowned his sorrows in drink.
4. to flood or inundate.
5. to overwhelm so as to render inaudible, as by a louder sound (often fol. by out).
6. to add too much water or liquid to (a drink, food, or the like).
7. to slake (lime) by covering with water and letting stand.
—Verb phrase
8. drown in,
a. to be overwhelmed by: The company is drowning in bad debts.
b. to be covered with or enveloped in: The old movie star was drowning in mink.
Semantics, shematics…..
It is torture. Albeit it doesn’t leave bruises or cuts or broken bones.
Semantics have nothing to do with it. As Fooser has correctly noted, either someone is being drowned or they aren’t. My contention is that they were not in fact being drown. There is a bag put over the terrorist head and water if pour over their face which ‘simulates’ drowning, only without the actual drowning part. I have NO need to parse words on the matter…
parsing the word drowning– I bet the person jumping from TWC wished he’d had some water to land in. More importantly that any techniques of ‘torture’ that would have prevented 911 and other attacks would have been used before planes, missiles or whatever hit into the buildings. A great post to match a well chosen image.
u all united states citizens know that bush planed it to allow war in iraq to get free oil, u people cant live without oil.
its very sad that ur own gov and 90% of the power rich people did this just for a war and oil.