Let's Go Waterboarding!!!

[rwarn17588]

<Conan wrote:

Right, wrong, or otherwise, this won't end torture. My personal perspective is, these are enemies we would shoot and kill on the battlefield, I honestly could care less what happens to them when they are interrogated.

<end clip>

Yes, but that's assuming that all the people we've tortured were taking up arms against the United States. There's at least one (there are others), a Canadian citizen, who was seized at an airport, tortured, and then released with no charges.

I mean, why would anyone resort to such evil doings in the first place? If for no other but liability reasons, why?

Shouldn't our nation be better than that? Why shouldn't we, to borrow an Abraham Lincoln phrase, appeal to the better angels of our nature? Or at least *try*?

I'm hearing a lot of excuses for this evil activity, instead of standing up against it. That's disheartening.

[spoonbill]

Liberals have removed our claws, our teeth and now they pick away at our brains.

Why should anyone respect us?  

There was a time when Americans had the will, determination and self-respect to do things that were difficult, and even ruthless in order to save the lives of their countrymen.  But now we just don't have the stomach for it.  We have expanded our definitions to help our detractors.  

It's our guilt that is at fault.  Our bravest soldier is unable to pull the trigger in a rain of enemy bullets.  He waits for an order to engage, and when he does, he is still in fear of retribution, not from his enemy, but from his own people.  We are attempting to place the same checks and balances on armed conflict as we put on domestic dispute.  We are attempting to bestow our constitution on people who do not live under our constitution, nor have any respect for it except when it may serve their own devices.  Our politicians have become our enemy's most important weapons.

We have grown beyond the capacity for war.  It is simply too hard and requires too much determination and sacrifice.  This will surely unravel us.

We are an old lame tiger with a mother's heart.  Perhaps someone will put us in a zoo.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588



There's at least one (there are others), a Canadian citizen, who was seized at an airport, tortured, and then released with no charges.

Canadians, eh?



Concerned about torture of innocent people?  Start with police and sherrif's dept's all over the country who torture Americans everyday first.

[FOTD]

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that my brother is a member of the board of directors of a high-profile corporation of mercenaries that is well-connected with the Bush Regime, especially since it's one that I've been shielding from a Congressional investigation. How could I possibly have known?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071114/ts_nm/iraq_usa_blackwater_dc_1

  We NEVER LIE, unless the truth won't work. Or
we have to now personally redefine the words truth, lie, freedom, privacy, illegal, treason, war mongering, war profiteering oh....and torture.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/14/krongard-blacwater-brother/

"Oh, you mean THAT brother!"

They've been hired to fight our war on drugs!

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ~Bertrand Russell

[Neptune]

quote:Originally posted by spoonbill

Liberals have removed our claws, our teeth and now they pick away at our brains.

Why should anyone respect us?  

There was a time when Americans had the will, determination and self-respect to do things that were difficult, and even ruthless in order to save the lives of their countrymen.  But now we just don't have the stomach for it.  We have expanded our definitions to help our detractors.

That's not quite accurate.  America has never been about torture, or slaughtering civilians.  That's why atrocities in WWII, Korea, or Vietnam, were hushed up.  That's why CIA does clandestine operations, so you don't know.  These practices are completely un-American, always have been.  That's why we were respected, we weren't obviously Evil.

Now we argue it, as if it's all relative, as if we're not sure what morality or ethics are.  As if there was ever a question.

America is falling apart from the inside.  Mostly by the hands of those who claim to be keeping it together.

[rwarn17588]

Hmmm. The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that waterboarding was torture.

In 1926.

Because it was used by law officers to extract a highly questionable confession from a black man.

And Mississippi in the 1920s was hardly what anyone would call a bastion of liberalism.

http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2007/11/if_it_was_tortu.html

[Friendly Bear]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

I admit I skimmed this thread.  All I have time for.  Has anyone mentioned the fact that we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding?  Following WWII we prosecuted it as a war crime.

Waterboarding is torture.

Legally, it is torture.

Practically, it is torture.

Ethically, it is torture.

It IS torture.

Any Questions??

[guido911]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Hmmm. The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that waterboarding was torture.

In 1926.

Because it was used by law officers to extract a highly questionable confession from a black man.

And Mississippi in the 1920s was hardly what anyone would call a bastion of liberalism.

http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2007/11/if_it_was_tortu.html

There are actually more recent court decisions that contain similar language (waterboarding is torture). I am not sure defining waterboarding as torture or as a tough interrogation technique is what is at issue. The issue in my opinion is whether waterboarding is against the law and, if so, do we start arresting and jailing people who do it.

[guido911]

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

I admit I skimmed this thread.  All I have time for.  Has anyone mentioned the fact that we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding?  Following WWII we prosecuted it as a war crime.

Waterboarding is torture.

Legally, it is torture.

Practically, it is torture.

Ethically, it is torture.

It IS torture.

Any Questions??

No questions. Thank goodness you are here to answer those easy questions for of us. We have been debating this for days now and all it took was you to come in and straighten us out.
Oh, while you are here, how about an answer for that whole "what's the meaning of life" thing...

[Friendly Bear]

quote:Originally posted by guido911

quote:Originally posted by Friendly Bear

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

I admit I skimmed this thread.  All I have time for.  Has anyone mentioned the fact that we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding?  Following WWII we prosecuted it as a war crime.

Waterboarding is torture.

Legally, it is torture.

Practically, it is torture.

Ethically, it is torture.

It IS torture.

Any Questions??

No questions. Thank goodness you are here to answer those easy questions for of us. We have been debating this for days now and all it took was you to come in and straighten us out.
Oh, while you are here, how about an answer for that whole "what's the meaning of life" thing...

Waterboarding is extreme torture to get quick results.  Assuming the torturers do not actually KILL the victim, it leaves NO marks.

How HANDY!

Our military and CIA learned from the Russkies and also later from our very own U.S. Bureau of Prisons administration of SuperMax prisons, that isolation, sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation are much more effective torture techniques to break down human resistance, but it is a LONG-TERM regimen.

These techniques also leave NO physical marks.  

How HANDY!

It took a couple of years of the rigorous application of total solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation to turn alleged Al Queda terrorist and U.S. Citizen Jose Padilla from a functioning human being into, as his attorneys attest, a piece of furniture.

Read up on their pleadings before the relevant U.S. District Court judge.  Makes some interesting reading on just how far down into the slime our military, Federal police and their associated jailers have sunk.  And, it makes me want to puke.

Oh, and by the way, Jose Padilla was NEVER charged with what he was arrested and confined in total isolation for YEARS:

He was never charged with the "dirty bomb" plot, that Attorney General Ashcroft trumpeted at his press conference.

Remember, the press conference?  The one with the statue of Blind Lady Justice in the background, with drapes placed over her bare bodice.  Modesty.  

Modestry:  The Hallmark of Compassionate Conservatism.  Along with Waterboarding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and extra-constitutional actions galore.

Welcome to the New World Order, Kameraden.

[guido911]

With Jose Rodriquez new book detailing his involvement in the enhanced interrogation technique program (yep, waterboarding)...



...there has been recent debate over the success and legalities of the practice. Here is Adam Carrolla channeling his best guido (language warning)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/04/carolla_rips_60_minutes_the_left_over_ridiculous_standard_on_torture.html

[patric]

With Jose Rodriquez new book detailing his involvement in the enhanced interrogation technique program (yep, waterboarding)...

Well of course the guy in charge of torture is going to make himself look like the hero of the fatherland, but history will not be kind to him no matter how many self-serving books and interviews he has.

The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1901491,00.html

[guido911]

Well of course the guy in charge of torture is going to make himself look like the hero of the fatherland, but history will not be kind to him no matter how many self-serving books and interviews he has.

The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1901491,00.html

My gosh, if only Rodriquez had thought about the sugar cookie method of interrogation instead of getting himself all sexually aroused by beating the crap (oops, making them hold their arms up, force feeding Ensure, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding (all of 3 freakin murderers)), then all of the evilness or protecting Americans within a year or so after 9/11 could have been avoided...

I go no problem, NO PROBLEM, with making people who have declared war on innocent men, women, and children being made a little uncomfortable. And screw history in this regard because who knows what could have happened but for EIT.

[Ed W]

It's from the Book of Five Rings, Guido.  To defeat your enemy, become his friend. And just like Nicolo Machiavelli's "The Prince", it's open to interpretation.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CKIBEBYwCA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeneration.feedbooks.com%2Fbook%2F3953.pdf&ei=BH-mT8_JA-Ke2AWUxdimAg&usg=AFQjCNHQ9vkJTat184n35KgZCsN9AiETew&sig2=5mditppx4yv-AI2RjuCGrA 

[guido911]

It's from the Book of Five Rings, Guido.  To defeat your enemy, become his friend. And just like Nicolo Machiavelli's "The Prince", it's open to interpretation.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CKIBEBYwCA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeneration.feedbooks.com%2Fbook%2F3953.pdf&ei=BH-mT8_JA-Ke2AWUxdimAg&usg=AFQjCNHQ9vkJTat184n35KgZCsN9AiETew&sig2=5mditppx4yv-AI2RjuCGrA 

I will read this. Although I disagree with your mindless, stupid, baseless opinions (teehee  ), I do take your opinions seriously.