He doesn't know if it is torture...

Crossbow said:
Actually, history shows that torture has a rather poor record when it comes to collecting good data that will actually be of any real use.

Occasionally, one can get a valuable bit of data from torture that was previously unknown and get the data in time for its use to do some good. However, one also gets vast amounts of unreliable data and out of date data that was simply provided in order to end the torture.

By the way, if torture is really so good at winning wars, then why did the Germans and Japanese loose World War II? After all, they engaged in plenty of torture and other war crimes.

Furthermore, there are plenty of Republicans who have financially benefited from this war such as the Congressman from San Diego, Halliburton, Blackwater, and so on. So you might want to consider these facts as well as your keen insight into the use of torture.
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But haveing a reputation for not tortureing and in general ethical behavior can also get people to come forward and provide information as well.
 
headscratcher4 said:
And, the point is, you don't know that you're not going to drown. Indeed, if they do it wrong, you do drown.
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Which is worse - thinking you might drown or undergoing the experience of drowning. They are both bad, but the experience of undergoing drowning has to be worse than the fear you might drown.
 
billydkid said:
Which is worse - thinking you might drown or undergoing the experience of drowning. They are both bad, but the experience of undergoing drowning has to be worse than the fear you might drown.
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And you think, ultimately, that in these conditions there is a distinction between the two?

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/images/2007/10/29/waterboard3small.jpg

I suspect the waterboarded individual can not tell the difference...save, hopefully, that at the end of it he isn't dead...but, wouldn't really know that (know that the torturer didn't botch the job, the fear of death didn't cause a heart attack, etc.) until you emerge from the other side.
 
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billydkid said:
Which is worse - thinking you might drown or undergoing the experience of drowning. They are both bad, but the experience of undergoing drowning has to be worse than the fear you might drown.
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And how many times have you drowned?
 
From the Human Rights Watch web site we have the following:
In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the US Supreme Court held that the humane treatment obligations of Common Article 3 apply to “enemy combatants” in United States custody. The Bush administration has since responded by issuing an executive order requiring the CIA to comply with Common Article 3 in its interrogation of detainees. This means that any interrogation technique approved for use by the CIA must be consistent with what the United States believes is permitted by Common Article 3. The United States would therefore have to acknowledge that the same techniques could lawfully be used by other nations against captured US soldiers and citizens in any situation governed by Common Article 3. ...

...Human Rights Watch pointed out that waterboarding has been prosecuted by US military courts as torture for over 100 years, since the Spanish-American War. After World War II, US military commissions prosecuted and severely punished enemy soldiers for having subjected American prisoners to waterboarding. In its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the State Department has consistently condemned other countries for waterboarding.

The Judge Advocates General of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines agreed in August 2006 that the use of waterboarding to create the misperception of drowning would violate US law and the law of war. Several Judge Advocates General (JAGs) specifically stated that use of this technique would violate the US anti-torture statute, making it a felony offense.
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So let's quit the absurd nonsensical debate about whether it constitutes torture and get to the real issue, the elephant in the room most politicians fear publicly acknowledging.

An editorial from the WA Post:
Mr. Bush authorized waterboarding in the past, most notably against al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If Mr. Mukasey now condemns the interrogation method as unconstitutional, he would probably be in conflict with Justice Department memoranda that implicitly endorse such techniques and that have been used by CIA interrogators and others to cloak their actions in legal legitimacy. The president could also be legally implicated for approving the method.
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(emphasis mine)

The excuses being made by Bush and Mukasey for not answering this question insult the intelligence of the entire country.
 
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steverino said:
The reality is that sometimes torture works ...
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"Sometimes", you say, torture works. I dare say. And sometimes tossing a coin accurately answers a "yes/no" question. 50% of the time, in fact.

This gives it a better track record than torture.

It was by torture that Stalin's interogators got tens of millions of his citizens to confess to taking capitalist gold in exchange for sabotaging the Soviet economy --- and to implicate others who were as innocent as they. Their methods, by the way, were usually confined to what has been dubbed "Torture Lite".

It was by torture that the medieval witchfinders elicited confessions to crimes not merely implausible, but absolutely impossible --- and again, got their suspects to name names of other people who went flying around on broomsticks.

I emphasise the naming of others because invariably the torturer, in getting his false confession, requires that saboteur/witch/terrorist names his accomplices, i.e. other people who should be arrested and subjected to torture.

Rarely can the phrase "vicious circle" have been so apt.
 
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skeptigirl said:
...

The excuses being made by Bush and Mukasey for not answering this question insult the intelligence of the entire country.
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I noticed today the excuse for not answering has evolved over time.

First it was sort of fumbling, "he can't comment because he hasn't been briefed". Then it became, "he can't comment on current policy", which of course he was never asked to comment on.

And today it was refined into, "if he comments the enemy will know we use it".

I say, who are you kidding? :rolleyes: What difference in he11 difference could it possibly make to the enemy if the US Attorney General nominee says water-boarding is or isn't torture?

But sigh... half the country is just ignorant enough to have a knee jerk reaction to the claim it would help the enemy and completely forgo actually thinking for a moment how stupid that claim is.
 
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tsig said:
If torture produces truth where all all the witches?
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Um... well, they were all found out thanks to torturing techniques and burned at the stake! Duh!

I think you just undermined your argument.

Aaron
 
GreNME said:
I don't think that really makes it any more defensible. However, despite whatever the people I've known who have said these things to me may have done in the service, they have all been generally decent people since I've known them. Definitely not Bad Guys or the types of dangerous agents of conspiracy theory fantasies. To me, it signifies the general cognitive dissonance in every human mind that compartmentalizes "what should be" and "what has to be" when they don't line up, and in some form or another that cognitive dissonance is always going to be present. The problem today is that the cognitive dissonance has reached a disruptive level, and generally I am of the opinion it's doing more harm than good as a whole. It's being institutionalized to a level that is appalling, as if institutionalizing it gives some kind of control over it somehow. (it does not)
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Beautifully said.

DR
 
Haven't we prosecuted water boarding as a war crime? Shouldn't America try to claim it does not believe in commiting war crimes?
 
ponderingturtle said:
Haven't we prosecuted water boarding as a war crime? Shouldn't America try to claim it does not believe in commiting war crimes?
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Good question. Do you have any cites/anecdotes that we have? I'd be interested in the cases.

But haveing a reputation for not tortureing and in general ethical behavior can also get people to come forward and provide information as well.
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Indeed. Perception has significant impact on how people make choices.

DR
 
skeptigirl said:
I noticed today the excuse for not answering has evolved over time.

First it was sort of fumbling, "he can't comment because he hasn't been briefed". Then it became, "he can't comment on current policy", which of course he was never asked to comment on.

And today it was refined into, "if he comments the enemy will know we use it".

I say, who are you kidding? :rolleyes: What difference in he11 difference could it possibly make to the enemy if the US Attorney General nominee says water-boarding is or isn't torture?

But sigh... half the country is just ignorant enough to have a knee jerk reaction to the claim it would help the enemy and completely forgo actually thinking for a moment how stupid that claim is.
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It appears that the confirmation may go through. We shall see. If it does, will the recent round of point making on this topic get a follow through? By that I mean, will the leadership in the House and Senate follow through on the details, and specifically the bits that Pres Bush obliquely referred to about "being classified" and thus not germane to the hearings and Mukase's role.

Was this more than a move in the political game? There is a year or so in which to follow up. The House and Senate have, or can get, access to classified briefings on the matters referred to as classified, so will they exercise this option? If so, what will House and Senate leadership do?

Or, will they wait for the 2008 cycle to try and get anything substantive changed at the policy level?

I suspect I am not the only person in America interested in the answer.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
Good question. Do you have any cites/anecdotes that we have? I'd be interested in the cases.
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I remember hearing it on NPR

here is a washington post citation
Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.
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link
 
This is a distraction from an even bigger issue: Mukasey believes that the president is above the law, and can break any law he wants to. The whole torture thing is only the tip of a very nasty iceberg.
 
Am I missing something...or have church leaders been unusually silent on this. I would have thought that the Catholic Bishops, at least, if not other denominations would have weighed in on the issue and condemned torture. Did I miss it?
 
headscratcher4 said:
Am I missing something...or have church leaders been unusually silent on this. I would have thought that the Catholic Bishops, at least, if not other denominations would have weighed in on the issue and condemned torture. Did I miss it?
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Why would they? Bush says "Jesus" a lot. So, surely Jesus approves of torture when Bush approves it... right?
 
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