Waterboarding - Child's Play in terms of "torture"

How old is this child? 16? I would have him watch Keith Olbermann's Special Comment for Nov. 5. That should be this child's homework. MY country does not torture. Ever. It is uncivilized. The criminals in the whitehouse are torturing, and they need to be prosocuted to the fullest extent of the law. I wonder how long Cheney would last being waterboarded? This young man needs a little occupational therapy to have empathy toward other human beings.

WHAT LAW? they arent doing it inside the borders of the united states. the law only applies to us citizens INSIDE the united states. these are terrorists. TERRORISTS. they have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. you want to give them 3 square meals a day, sit em down in a comfortable chair, and politely ask them to tell us all their secrets? no no no. we need to do anything it takes. waterboarding does not cause death. it merely stimulates the gag reflex to make it seem like you are dying. small price to pay for priceless information

At least you acknowledge that waterboarding is indeed torture.

The reason we shouldn't be waterboarding is because we have an example to set. Yes, people have been beheaded by terrorists and terrorists have taken countless innocent lives but there is a reason that evidence gained through torture is inadmissable in court. The reason is that people who want to be alive will say anything to stay alive. Some information might be true yes, and some of it is false.

Beyond the veractiy of the information gleaned from such practices we must worry about those who truly are innocent. This is why US law, the spirit of the law, should be applied to everyone we hold for interrogation and not just those inside the country. For when we make hypocritical statements about no torture inside the states but anything goes outside our borders we ruin our credibility in the world at large. We need to observe the same moral code outside our borders that we do inside. To legally torture people anywhere drags us down to the level of these terrorists. It is morally tantamount to the beheadings and other practices we are fighting against.

You're just not taking into account that if the suspects are indeed terrorists, then they are willing to die for their cause. They flew jet planes full of people into buildings. That means if they really have information that we want, they would rather die than tell us. This is probably also the reason that it's well known that information obtained through torture is mostly false.

We'd be much more effective if we knocked them out and installed RFID chips or multiple other tracking devices. That way we can take down entire cells rather than sitting in warehouses in Italy dumping water on people in order to obtain deadends. I'm not sure if the British used tracking chips, but they did use heavy surveillance on the terrorists that bombed London. They tracked them for several days and were able to capture all of the terrorists in the cell. This is not only more humane, but clearly more effective.

We're all a little emotionally shaken up after having been introduced to tactics that have been going on in the rest of the world for centuries. But it's a tad silly to destroy who we are as Americans in order to prevent terrorists to ... destroy who we are as Americans. It makes more sense to look at other countries that have been effective in dealing with terrorism in the past, like the British with the IRA.

@LowFlyingJets

You cannot possibly know whether they are in fact terrorists. You don't know them you don't know what they did you don't know why they were captured.

You have nothing but what some people in the government tell you about these individuals.
And don't conservatives like to say the government cannot get anything right? That the government cannot be trusted?

Just why do you believe that those who are in US custody and are tortured are in fact terrorists?
I mean every single one of them. How do you know?

You have nothing other than the government telling you: trust us.

Which begs the question: why on earth do you trust them?

This guy was not a terrorist. He was still tortured.
What about that?


http://www.maherarar.ca/

Maher Arar, thanks for posting that stardate, I couldn't remember his name.

Do you think that a person being tortured will actually tell the truth? No. That person will say anything to make the pain stop.
What law? How about the Geneva Convention. How about the law of humanity. I know...we have lost so many of our laws, of our Constitutional Rights, of our humanity with this mal-administration. I am very sorry that you...being so young....are buying into this crap. We have lost hebeus corpus. We are being wire-tapped. Just today the Senate confirmed an Attorney General who stated that nothing the president does is out of the realm of our laws. He can do as he wishes....which is what has happened since the Supreme Court declared bush the president. So, when you are trying to fly to Germany, and are stopped, detained, because your name is on the NO FLY list, you may thank your ever watchful government. There are over 78 thousand people ....Americans...on that list. You can...by your own admission...be Renditioned to another country, purely on gwbush's call...to Egypt to be tortured for awhile. When you are found to be not a terrorist, they can dump you wherever, and you must find your way home. Now...lest you think this is a fictional account, like on 24, you are wrong. There are many people that have had this done to them, and have tried to sue, and have been shut down...because of (State Secrets). Wake up, young man, and fight for your country the way you are meant to. I can tell that you are very bright...we need you to be on our side, not on the side of the Facists.

Just today a great man took a stand, and called for the Impeachment of Cheney. Not for a blow-job...(not even a lie about a blow-job)...but for lies and cover-ups and power grab and torture and death and distruction and hate and horror and and death and death and death. The repubs tried to make the dems look like fools.(as usual), but I think they may have failed this time. This action has been voted to go to the Judiciary Committee. The great John Conyers officiating. He is very precise...I have two of his books. For the first time since the SCOTUS ruled on the election of bush, I have a glimmer of hope.

The problem is that ever since this countries conception, torture has been something to not be condoned. General and President George Washington was strictly against torture. Throughout the two and a half centuries that our nation has existed, torture has been few, far between and never praised. What is disturbing is that our current administration is that first we had our soldiers mentally and physically torturing prisoners. We wouldn't have even known about it except someone thought it was a good idea to bring a camera and photographed the treatment of prisoners. After the blew over our government contracted out to another country. Now by law if you outsource to other people to commit a crime then you are as responsible as the people you contracted to commit the crime. Torture is a crime, so if we outsource to other people to torture for us then guess what, we are committing a crime.

On top of that, torture is an incredibly unreliable method of gathering intelligence. First and foremost, torturing for information spawns more lies from prisoners who begin to want nothing more than relief. This happens when you torture a prisoner for information that he does not know. Do you stop torturing him because he tells you that he does not know the answer, no. You assume he's lying and keep torturing him until he feed you an answer. That false information can be more damning than good information is redeeming.
Second, you have had and continue to have a problem with torturing people who are suspected as terrorists. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY ARE TERRORISTS! Iraqi citizens have been abducted and tortured because they might have a link to terrorism. Most of them that "might" DON'T! A specific event that was absolutely appalling happened to a Canadian citizen, whom I think was a Muslim immigrant. This man was abducted by our government and tortured for information for month because our government thought that it might be possible that this person had links to terrorists. Turns out he didn't have any links. What is even better is that someone might think we would owe him an apology. Well he didn't get one, at least not from us. He got an apology from the Canadian government for actions taken against him by the United States. That's like me hitting my sister and making her cry for a reason that turns out to be false, then my neighbor apologizes for me.

Now as to waterboarding not being "real" torture, I'm going to ask a question. Has anyone who makes this claim has ever drowned? I have never drowned so I have no personal experience. If you want to get an idea of whether or not simulated drowning is torture, ask a person who has drown about the experience, the only instances I have ever heard about drowning not being a terrible event is when drowning follows extreme hypothermia, in which case the body is already shutting down before it is submerged and the brains ability to feel and recognize pain is severely diminished.

Hundreds of thousands or even millions? Where are you getting your info boy?

OMG stop drinking the kool aid!!

Young man, you need to question authority not just blindly follow it.

Someone tie this guy down and pour water in his face--let's see how he feels afterwards.

i just cannot believe withi what implicity is deducted that any human right is denied to people just because they are not American Citizens. Is this crime against Human Right Charta (signed by the US) is excused just because it is committed by US citizen outside the territorry of the US? What about "so called" Terrorist (there has been no legal process to proove this) with american nationality in the U.S.? Do they loose there human rigths and therefore as soon as they get designated terrorist by someone? This is feudalistic arbitrariness Europe has got over in the Middle Ages!!

A large (disturbingly large!) number of GitMo detainees have been released because they are innocent. Most Republicans and Conservatives are under the deeply misguided impression of HOW these guys got rounded up. The majority of these guys werent rounded up in the middle of a firefight, but rather the US offered CASH to Iraqis who would turn in terrorists. A lot of these people were actually innocent and turned in for the bounty. In addition to that, they dont know anything. You can break their legs with a baseball bat and scream "Where is Osama?" untile your blue in the face, doesnt change the fact that these guys simply dont know anything. More importantly, how can we spread our democractic values and LAWS if we refuse to apply them to anyone else? How serious will other people in oppressed countries take us if we say torture is wrong, but only if you are white and live in America? You simply cannot do exactly what Saddam did and claim you are superior. Saddam rejected the rule of law, and so do we. Saddam rounded up people and held them without trial or evidence, and so do we. Saddam used enhanced interrogation techniques, and so do we. You cant do exactly what the bad guys do and still claim youre morally superior. Ask the innocent GitMo detainee whose legs we smashed with a hammer if we are "better" than Saddam or just the same and I bet he will tell ya there isnt a noticeable difference. And then he will roll away in his wheel chair back to his family in Iraq to tell them all about the great time he had in American custody. Our over the top torture anything that moves policy is creating more suicide bombers than its catching.

"literally cut off their heads"
...as opposed to figuratively?
haha
personally im against waterboarding

1st Quote: "..that its a form of torture.. which is ridiculous"

2nd Quote : "The definition of torture is the threat of imminent death to a United States citizen".

3rd Quote : "Compare that to splashing a little water to simulate drowning.."

How many times does he contradict his own view? I think we can all admit this kind of commentary should be laughed at.



ha ha ha

False. 18 USC 2340 is not the issue. Waterboarding is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. This violation makes the US look bad in the eyes of other countries and therefore hurts our reputation in regards to foreign policy. In addition, I think the bigger issue is the destruction of the tapes that took place and the whitehouse cover-up that followed thereafter.

Now, let's see: It's BAD to do water-boarding to a U.S. citizen but it's NOT BAD to do it to whomever a US citizien (as this kid is, I assume) consider is a "sick maniac" or "terrorist". This, in a capsule, is a clear sign of what a sick and decaying society is all about. In a nutshell I-me-mine (with George Harrison's music).

omg
what an idiot
did her say the word torture doesnt apply to inernational people?
so its only for americans? only americans can be tortured ? so when you beat someone to death, and that person happens to be lets say Iraqi, then its not torture?
ThIS KID IS SICK SICK SICK
and people like should not reproduct!
on advice-----> read read and read some more and i dont mean cosmo i mean read the Washington report , etc. Because it seems that you believe that americans are holy and innocent .. which is bull!

Eesh was here------------->>>

From what i've seen i doubt I'd agree with you on a majority of issues, but in this case i do. If it is the only way to obtain the information needed then that's what needs to happen. It is when such methods are used without justification that there are issues. If it really is a last resort i think that it is admissable.