My take on waterboarding

Hear, hear.

as usual - well said, henry.

Whudeva. Nice viewpoint henry

I don't think anyone wants to be waterboarded. Torture is torture. waterboarding is torture

Realrollins, Perfectly said. GWB and Cheney ought to be first in line to try out waterboarding, Preferably naked with women's underwear on their ugly heads. Maybe holding hands and not under oath? Nah, put them under oath.

congratulations to kaj larsen for making available a novel idea to our insane society, with the plague of juvenile delinquency,driveby shootings, turf warfare did itever occur to him that other fools will use his demonstration at the expense of innocent lives in playgrounds, or wherever idle youth meet. ever heard of copycat.Or is that his own ego hindered him from evaluating the phrase " much knowledge is much sorrow ".

Once again, you prove why you make the "big bucks", Mr. Rollins ;-).

By the way, add to the list for waterboarding (aka controlled drowning) all those so-called "journalists" who constantly bring up the "Ticking Time Bomb" scenario - that only happens in episodes of "24" and contrary to popular belief, "24" is fiction. Real life is more complex and even if it weren't, torture is not an effective means for gathering reliable intelligence. If any terrorist attack, no matter how small, had ever been averted because of intelligence gathered through the use of waterboarding or any other form of torture, Bush, Cheney and everyone at FOX News would be crowing about it 24/7. But the only thing we are hearing from Bush is how he has no recollection of anything his administration has done over the past 7+ years (sad, but possibly true), Cheney is busy getting the latest pumping mechanism he uses in place of a heart jump-started and FOX News is desperately hoping another pregnant white woman will go missing.

You cant even spank your children in this country without having them taken away. How can they say this is not torture?

Yes Henry, "water boarding" is an aggressive interrogation tactic (torture). In response to Tommygun264's post: "No recollection" is a government term used to keep the truth hidden (a.k.a. a lie).

so if my father is in iran reporting the news.Then he is captured and gets his head chopped off and if someone used waterboarding to have saved him.In this country we approve of executing people for killing other people yet when we use waterboarding to get information that will save lives.,,,,,we get all sqmish

Well, at least you didn't use the all-too-commonly-used "ticking time bomb" example, onedayinhell27. Perhaps because it has been roundly debunked by every reputable intelligence agency as an unreal scenario. As far as the situation you describe, you failed to explain how torturing someone could win the release of your father while he is being held in Iran, but that isn't surprising because like the ticking time bomb scenario, it is a work of fiction, with no basis in reality, therefore the point is moot. In fact, the Bush administration has been unable to cite a single specific instance in which waterboarding has lead to actionable intelligence which has saved a single life. All they do is say "it's saved countless lives", but refuse to explain how citing national security. Coming from an administration which has been all too eager to endanger the lives of it's own intelligence officers and countless international intelligence operatives in other countries for the sake of political gain (ex: the outing of Valerie Wilson - whose position as a covert CIA operative was verified by the CIA and Republican Prosecutor Patrick Fitsgerald in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - an act of Treason, by the way) it is hard to believe their assertion. No, episodes of "24" don't count as reality.

It has been intimated by the Bush administration that Abu Zabayda was waterboarded - among the "valuable intelligence" produced from torturing this man who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic were the allegation that Mohammed Atta had met with representatives of Saddam Hussien's government in the Czech Republic (an allegation which was at the time debunked by Czech intelligence) and the confirmation of the existence of vast stockpiles of WMD's in Iraq (I'm sure those will turn up any day now). This false intelligence brought to you by torture was used to launch the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq at the cost of thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives and our once solvent national treasury, now safely in the accounts of Haliburton, Blackwater and countless other Bush/Cheney supporters growing fat while out soldiers die.

Finally, your assumption that everyone else's chests swell with patriotic pride over the fact that the United States comes in only second to Communist China in the number of citizens put to death each year per capita (some of them innocent, but who cares, right?) is as false and baseless as your assumption that torture saves lives. Facts, onedayinhell27, not episodes of "24" or vague assertions by proven liars trying to excuse their crimes, but facts are what you need. So bring em on.

How do I get a gig at this 'Water Boarding Central' that you speak of?

I've got dibs on Romney.

I think the real question isn't what information is extracted by using waterboarding, or any other torture technique. The question is, how many truly innocent people are tortured. If someone does not provide information, it does not necessarily imply that information is being witheld. Torture is the act of those that presume guilt, not innocence. Where does the burden of proof lie for Americans? Why should it be any different for any other person in the world?

OMG, i lov current.com i didnt expect to see u on here at all i love your spoken word it is a treat in st.louis anywhoo i do agree w/ your answer sir ;o)

If you are part of the al-quaeda terror orginazation, captured and in custody and have information about an upcoming terrorist attack upon the USA, our allies, or our interests and are not forthcoming with the information, it is the responsibility of our Government to do whatever means necessary to prevent such an attack.Case in point, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. I do not want to be waterboarded, but I would be waterboarded so that these al-quaeda leaders can be water boarded. I understand that information revealed through such cohersive is not the most reliable. Waterboarding, in my opinion, should never be a standard operating procedure. Consider the ticking time-bomb scenereo. The government heas the obligation to protect us. I think you are great Henry and I respect you opinion, I just disagree with it. I have a real great idea, if you do not want to be waterboarded, DON'T MESS WITH THE U.S.

If, If, If - come on mjsmith11, your argument might hold water IF there was a single documented case where waterboarding or any other form of torture has ever saved lives. Sorry, but episodes of "24" don't count. In fact, not a single shred of actionable intelligence has been extracted with waterboarding - including from your "case in point, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed". Believe me, if it had, we would never hear the end of it from the Bush administration or their shills over at FOX News. Oh, he did supply plenty of information about supposed plots under pain of torture, but none of them turned out to be true. That is because when you torture someone, they don't tell you the truth - they tell you whatever you want to hear in order to get you to stop torturing them. Case in point - the claims that Saddam Hussein had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological WMD's as well as the ability to rain them down on Britain and the United States within an hour's time and let's not forget the claim that the 9/11 hijackers were backed by Saddam's government, all of which the 9/11 Commission and even George W. Bush himself have since admitted had no basis in fact. All of these false claims were obtained through various forms of torture, including waterboarding. Furthermore, there is not one single example of the "ticking time-bomb scenario" you and the rest of the pro-torture lobby love so much having ever been played out in real life. It just sounds good.

The only person who has ever been convicted for an attack on the World Trade Center is Ramsey Usef, who attempted to bring the towers down with a car bomb. He was tracked down, arrested, tried and convicted to life without parole through our legal, constitutional, criminal justice system. And here's another little nugget for you: the location of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not obtained through the use of torture or illegal wiretapping - our government tracked him down legally, with a warrant issued by the FISA Court, by tracing a phone call placed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by his nephew, none other than Ramsey Usef.

Yes, our government has an obligation to protect us and there is an excellent, centuries old, ever-evolving criminal justice system which has proven quite effective in keeping us safe, when used by competent officials who are actually concerned with keeping us safe. Our government also has an obligation to follow our Constitution and to uphold the rule of law. Perhaps if you could come up with some real life evidence to support your position, you could get torture and warrant-less wiretapping legalized. But until then, you will have to look to your box set of "24" DVD's to support your argument. Gotta go now - reality is calling.

Tommygun264, I Never Watched 24. I stand by what I said. If I have to be waterboarded so people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can be, so be it.

So mjsmith11, even though nothing good comes from it, no lives have been saved, in fact lives have been lost, no terrorist plans have been thwarted and torture only helps terrorist groups like Al-Queda recruit more followers from the hundreds of previously innocent men who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, got scooped up, taken to Cuba or some other U.S. black site to be detained, tortured and then released months or even years later. More than 400 of the suspected terrorists originally held in Guantanamo have already been found to be innocent. They have been returned to their native lands without charge, without compensation or even an apology for their mistreatment. My guess is that many of these men and their families who never had any grudge against the U.S. prior to being mistreated will now want to take revenge if given the chance. Meanwhile how many terrorists held at Guantanamo have been tried and convicted of terrorism? Care to guess? Try none. Torture creates more terrorists - that is a fact. Yet you stand by your position with no facts in your favor, only hypothetical scenarios which have never been tested in reality because they have never happened. Well, that makes a lot of sense. People like you are giving Bin Laden exactly what he wants.

Tommygun264, This topic is just about waterboarding. I think that the three times that it has been used according to Mr. Hayden's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee was apropiate. I understand that you disagree with me. I am against torture as a form of punishement and history shows that information gathered through torture is usually very unreliable. There are much more effective ways to get information from people. I think you are very intelligent and I would like to perhaps talk with you about these other subjects if you would like to in the near future. I am only talking specifically about waterboarding as an interrogation technique right now, because this is the subject of the thread.
"Mr Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee that his agency had used the technique against three of its most important terror suspects, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, during 2002 and 2003. “We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time,” he said. “There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable, and we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0HzC22rsazNY3EH2Nhx...

go to youtube and watch a 9/11 video and the ppl that jumped out of the windows and the kids that died in there and you fill sorry for these ppl that did this and you are not pissed get the hell out of the USA......thank GOD you ppl did not help the U.S independence

not having some means of serious information gathering is like yelling stop or I will say stop again

I second that oh Henry.No matter what fancy wrapper you put it in it is still Torture.Glad to see some Conscieinceness on this site.Yeah the 21st century!

I agree that waterboarding is torture. The only reason that those presidential candidates don’t state whether or not they believe it is torture, is to avoid looking bad in front of their voters and whatever. Bush won’t call it torture because torture was declared against the rules of war, so if he said it was, he’d get in trouble. And God forbid a person get in trouble for allowing that to happen. Bush just needs to admit that he screwed up and accept punishment.

I agree with your post about water boarding if you had never been water boarded you should and then make the choice and if not I guess you shouldn’t be able to vote or what ever

I agree with your post about waterboarding, I think the people that don’t believe its wrong should get it done to them so they can feel the pain and harassment.

I agree with your post about waterboarding. I mean because we as Americans have the right to live without fear of being injured or killed because everyone has the right to live. Because if someone considers it not to be torture then why don’t they do it everyday. If people think it’s not torture then should have to experience it and then tell me what they think about waterboarding. I know that I would never want to experience something like that.

I agree with this video because I believe that waterboarding is a form of torture.I knows that I wouldn’t want to have that done to me. There is other ways to get answers or have people talk so you can get the truth out of them. You don’t have to make them feel a near death experience and be scared for life just because they didn’t want to tell you something. He is right most people don’t know how they feel about this. I think everyone should look into this. This could become a serious issue and happen more and more.

I agree if the people say water boarding is not touture should be sent to a bass to have it done to them.

hi henry rollins you rock! I need to meet you one day.

Peace

namaste

Kelly Day
OMshaantih@mac.com