Is Waterboarding Effective?

Let's back up and verify that we even have the RIGHT people! Wasn't the military going around offering a "bounty" to anyone that turned is a "terrorist"? That means that the poor and unemployed Iraqi had a lot of motivation to turn in people just to get the cash, people who may have had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. So it really doesn't matter how many times our soldiers smash a GitMo detainees genitals with a hammer because these people don't know anything to begin with. Plus thanks to the suspension of habeas corpus we can't go back and verify the legitimacy and accuracy of the charges or the circumstances these detainees were picked up. It could be upwards of ninety-nine percent of the detainees were "captured" simply because one Iraqi walked up to a solider and said, "See that guy over there. He owes me money. Oh yeah! And he's terrorist too. Now give me reward!" It's really tribute to the Right Wing Noise Machine that we arguing over the effectiveness of waterboarding while ignoring all other "enhanced interrogation techniques" which include genital mutilation for crying out loud. I can't believe we've totally accepted without question (especially the journalists) that every single person in GitMo is an actual terrorist with irrefutable ironclad evidence attesting to that fact WITHOUT actually seeing any evidence. Forget asking if waterboarding works. Go back to square one and VERIFY that we even have the right people in custody!

I don't think this is a useful discussion. Why pretend that waterboarding has any practical use? It's torture. Let's not give waterboarding any credence by discussing it's possible merits. It's TORTURE! JUST STOP!

totally agree with solszewski... you could just as easily analyze whether jabbing a prisoner's genitals with a hot poker while blaring Kenny G's latest Christmas album in his ears leads to "workable intelligence", but the fact remains that it's torture, which is illegal and something we supposedly don't do...

Where is Operation Rescue and the entire Pro-Life Movement? Now we've all seen them sobbing uncontrollably in the streets spitting on woman as they try to enter a clinic (because they love LIFE sooo much) and yet where are they on torture? Why have they been totally silent on this issue? Do these people who preach the alleged "sanctity of life" not care about the torture of the GitMo detainees because those people aren't Christian? Is it because they are not Americans? Or is it something a little more (sigh) common? Should I say it? Fine. Is the real reason they silently condone the torture of these people simply because they aren't white? Notice how NONE of these "enchanced interrogation techniques" are acceptable (under ANY circumstances) for white Christian Americans. But if the victim happens to be.....

THE ONLY function of torture is to put fear into the masses. To keep them in line. The whole debate about tazers is similar. Tazers are NOT a needed tool by police but they have a greater function of placing fear into the public organism. We see this work perfectly as the mood of the room changed in an instant during the "don?t taze me bro" incident. This never has been about gathering information. It is all to keep the fear alive. CurrentTV would help by not running the waterboarding pod anymore. We get it already. Please stop.

crob80227

Good answer. Make sure you have the right person first and it does not good at all to just interrogate everyone or just anyone. But you are wrong about soldiers smashing nuts with a hammer, at GITMO. That is a Marine Corps base so it would be Marines doing that if it were taking place. Soldiers are ONLY in the army.

Ah. I didn't know that. Good point, Mim.

Torture brings no reliable information. Its sole purpose is to intimidate anyone who disagrees with the regime. Torture is a standard practice of fascist regimes. It is being done in our name and we should stop it immediately.

Who cares if it's effective or not.
Has anyone heard of HUMAN RIGHTS???!!!
Our government is going fascist.

Perhaps it is a bad idea for me to weigh in but, as an amateur torturer, I believe that the use of torture for interrogation is a sign of incompetence and cowardice.

I should also mention this was one of the worst ?professional interrogation? scenes I have ever seen. These guys just did not seem to know what they were doing.

Before anyone calls the cops, I should explain. Play torture is not the same thing as real torture. Everyone I play with knows what is going to happen to them, and they are doing it because they enjoy the experience. If things go too far, they are always able to stop what is going on. I only do this with people who consent to this type of play. It?s the consent itself that I find interesting and enjoyable. I find the notion of ?real torture? disgusting, and I am probably far less likely to every use real violence than most. I?ve spent a lot of time learning and practicing interrogation. It is remarkably easy to make mistakes that can cause physical injury, and even the simplest of activities can cause psychological harm. (Kids, don?t try this at home). I am by no means an expert, but I do have enough knowledge of the subject to make some comments.

The key to interrogation is in crafting a compelling story. You need to know exactly what you want to subject to do, and you need to convince the subject that he has no choice but to comply. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but you have to somehow bring the person to a place where compliance is the only logical solution. Everything needs to lead up to that single moment where compliance in inevitable.

Pain and discomfort, in very very careful doses, can sometimes help. We are, as a species, used to pain. Our pain tolerances are actually much higher than we think they are. Too much pain at the wrong time, and the subject will realize that it isn?t as bad as they thought. It is also hard to remember pain? we are actually able to forget traumatic events literally seconds after they end.

Implacable logic is a vastly better tool.

Listen to the questions that the interrogators were asking. Did they give the impression that there was one specific thing they were asking for, or did their demands just seem to change randomly? Did they give the impression that they knew more than the subject, or did they make it clear that they didn?t know anything? Did they ever even indicate that compliance would mean that the water boarding would stop?

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My point is that interrogation is really, really hard to do well. All the interrogators I know believe that physical torture is almost never the most effective technique. It could conceivably work in certain cases, but you would be much better off learning better psychological techniques than learning how to water board safely.

The problem is that torture allows the incompetent interrogator to look like he knows what he is doing. It is much easier to say to your boss ?I can?t get the subject to talk because you won?t let me water board him? than ?I can?t get him to talk because I don?t speak Pashto, I don?t understand his culture, I haven?t had enough training, I don?t know why we detained him, and for all I know he might actually be innocent?.

As an officer, it is much easier to cover your ass, look the other way and ask your superiors for more leeway in interrogation. It takes a lot of courage to stand your ground, take a principled stance, and risk looking weak on terror. Even in the public sphere it costs you nothing to say that everything is permissible to defend American lives.

Look at Abu Ghraib? None of the people convicted knew anything about interrogation, and no one involved even spoke Arabic. None of their superiors, right up to the white house, had any experience in interrogation. Everyone from Karpinski to Bush plead ignorance, incompetence or cowardice.

I can?t help suspect that that part of the reason that the CIA tapes were destroyed. Criminal levels of cruelty can sometimes be excused in a war. Criminal levels of incompetence can?t.

I don't agree that water boarding doesn't produce information. There is only one reported case of this happening since America has begun doing it in the Iraq War. I believe that we should do anything possible to get information out of the terrorists in order to protect Iraqi civilians, US soldiers, and US civilians.

There is a difference between 'reported' and 'proved'.

I don't think we have any way of knowing how many people have been waterboarded. Many ex-detainees have claimed to be physically tortured, but such claims are hard to prove. The evidence seems to suggest that a lot of torture has happened.

We do know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, because Michael Hayden testified as much to the senate. KSMs 'confession' looks exactly like the kind of bad intelligence that you would get from torture. It looks like a list of everything he could think of to say to get them to stop hurting him.

I've tried being waterboarded a few times, and it is pretty frightening. Your body is convinced that you are going to die, so it induces a blinding panic. I've tried milder, safer versions of breath play on other people. One person had recurring flashbacks of the scene for months, and she would curl up in a ball and cry.

But although waterboarding seems to cause a lot of psychological damage, it just doesn't seem to be effective for interrogation. I don't object to it because it is inhuman, but because it is both inhuman and ineffective.

If you really wanted to do everything possible to get information out of a terrorist, then you should be using straightforward vintage psychological interrogation. The US has been using it since the 60s, and we are very good at it. It takes a lot of skill to do it right, but it is effective.

This isn't being soft on terrorists... psychological torture is much much worse than simple waterboarding. It is horrible and evil. But it is effective.

If you want, we can debate if it is ethical to psychologically torture the guilty to protect the innocent. Is it right to commit evil in the name of the greater good? Is the information we get worth a public relations disaster when our tactics are revealed? Is the short term gain worth the massive worldwide backlash against the US ?

But the argument doesn't apply when we waterboard. It doesn't apply when we allow people to be beaten by thugs with shredded cables in rat infested prisons. It doesn't apply when we deny painkillers to wounded civilians to 'soften them up'. It doesn't apply when you torture people without an interpreter, so you can't understand what they are saying.

We get all of the negatives, and absolutely none of the positives. Waterboarding is evidence of sadism and incompetence, not zeal.

Yes I do think waterboarding is still effective. I don’t really think it’s the best way to get people to confess. But it is still effective. Its not only used for terriosts the police and the CIA use this method to. The CIA think its affective to do this to get information out of people under questioning. Others think this method does not work. Personal I don’t think it works that well. They probably will end up telling you the truth. But most of the people will be permanently scared for life because of this.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "Its not only used for terriosts the police and the CIA use this method to".

Police in the United States are not legally allowed to torture anyone in their custody. I believe a Texas sheriff was actually convicted in 1983 for waterboarding inmates:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E7D9...

There is quite of bit of information in the public domain about CIA interrogation tactics. A lot of it is pretty horrific, but waterboarding doesn't seem to be part of their framework.

It does seem like a bunch of lunatics in the White House thought that increasing the brutality of interrogations would increase their effectiveness. I don't think it works like that.

Hi prettygrl2,

I have not seen any evidence that waterboarding is effective in getting true information out of people. If you can produce some evidence, I would like to see it. It may make some of us feel like we are accomplishing something, but what we accomplish with torture is not good. Besides being life-threatening, waterboarding takes a psychological toll on the victim as well as the perpetrator. Historically, when it is used in a war situation, it tends to work its way back into domestic police practice. This is not good for our society, not good for our place in the world community, and it invites others to torture our soldiers and citizens. It serves no useful purpose. It is cruel and abusive, and I do not want it done in my name.