The USA Has Used Waterboarding

Crossbow

Seeking Honesty and Sanity
Crossbow
Joined
Oct 23, 2001
Messages
14,596
Location
Charleston, WV
I found it rather odd that no one started a thread on this subject since the issue of the USA engaging in torture has come up so many times in JREF, so here goes ...

Ending at least a few years of speculation and quite a few denials from the Bush Administration, the CIA has finally admitted that they have used Waterboarding on three people and "enhanced interrogation techniques" on about 30 people.

Read more about here:

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/05/639702.aspx

CIA reveals more on waterboarding

...

CIA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that fewer than 100 people have been held by the CIA in its terrorist detention program. And of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to enhanced interrogation methods, he said.

...

As for the controversial practice of waterboarding, Hayden told the senators it was used on only three people more than five years ago. For the first time, he named them in public - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, all accused of being al-Qaida leaders.

...

Hayden says waterboarding was used "because of the circumstances of the time - the belief that additional catastrophic attacks were imminent at a time when the US had limited knowledge of how al-Qaida worked." All three of the men who were waterboarded are currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

...
Click to expand...
 
Any discussion of whether we gained any new knowledge via the enhanced interogations?
 
casebro said:
Any discussion of whether we gained any new knowledge via the enhanced interogations?
Click to expand...

I thought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spilled the beans on everything from Al Qaeda plans to what his mother ate the night before after having it done to him for 2 minutes.
 
Matteo Martini said:
The dividing line between Islamic "terrorism" and war-on-terror is getting more and more blurred..
Click to expand...
I like your use of the scare quotes, as if you believe Islamist terrorism isn't real.

LordoftheLeftHand said:
I don't think there was a line to start with :mad:

LLH
Click to expand...
So in your strange version of reality, blowing up trains, blowing up nightclubs, blowing up mosques full of worshipers, beheading journalists and international aid workers, strapping bombs to unsuspecting women with Downs Syndrome and sending them into shopping areas, and crashing planes into buildings, all these things are no worse than pouring water up the nose of a guy who planned them in order to find out what he has planned next.

Got it.

Advice: While you have your head in there, you should check for polyps and other abnormal growths; colon cancer can be a deadly disease.

I note that Hayden doesn't rule out the possibility of using waterboarding in the future should circumstances require. Good.
 
Last edited:
BPSCG said:
I like your use of the scare quotes, as if you believe Islamist terrorism isn't real.

So in your strange version of reality, blowing up trains, blowing up nightclubs, blowing up mosques full of worshipers, beheading journalists and international aid workers, strapping bombs to unsuspecting women with Downs Syndrome and sending them into shopping areas, and crashing planes into buildings, all these things are no worse than pouring water up the nose of a guy who planned them in order to find out what he has planned next.

Got it.

Advice: While you have your head in there, you should check for polyps and other abnormal growths; colon cancer can be a deadly disease.

I note that Hayden doesn't rule out the possibility of using waterboarding in the future should circumstances require. Good.
Click to expand...

That's not the issue.

If you know that the person you are torturing has been blowing up things, then why do you need to torture him? Prosecute him instead.

Why is waterboarding any different than raping you, your mother, your sister or your infant daughter, to get you to talk?

In other words: Why do you think torture works to get information?
 
Policenaut said:
I thought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spilled the beans on everything from Al Qaeda plans to what his mother ate the night before after having it done to him for 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

i hear he confessed to being responsible for the zimmerman telegram, too.
 
BPSCG said:
So in your strange version of reality, blowing up trains, blowing up nightclubs, blowing up mosques full of worshipers, beheading journalists and international aid workers, strapping bombs to unsuspecting women with Downs Syndrome and sending them into shopping areas, and crashing planes into buildings, all these things are no worse than pouring water up the nose of a guy who planned them in order to find out what he has planned next.
Click to expand...

How you got all that from a 1 line statement is beyond me...

LLH
 
How does one pour water up someone's nose?
Are pumps involved? Or is the victim first inverted and the water poured, in, as it were, the gravitationally acceptable downward manner?
 
Soapy Sam said:
How does one pour water up someone's nose?
Are pumps involved? Or is the victim first inverted and the water poured, in, as it were, the gravitationally acceptable downward manner?
Click to expand...
Ask ConspiRaider. He knows all about waterboarding. Or at least talks like he does.
 
BPSCG said:
Ask ConspiRaider. He knows all about waterboarding. Or at least talks like he does.
Click to expand...

As you do.

If you know that the person you are torturing has been blowing up things, then why do you need to torture him? Prosecute him instead.

Why is waterboarding any different than raping you, your mother, your sister or your infant daughter, to get you to talk?

In other words: Why do you think torture works to get information?
 
gtc said:
Because shoving water up someone's nose is the same as raping their daughter.
Click to expand...

I think the same, but, hey, I'm open-minded. I just want to know what the difference is.

If there is one.
 
You do realize that the US waterboards it's own military (or at least did; I don't know the current practices)? I know somebody who went through it during training. It's a light hearted anecdote to him.

I don't know anyone who tells the raping of their daughters or wives as a light hearted anecdote, but then I don't get out much.
 
They're Wahhabist fundamentalist radicals at best, al-Qaida at worst. They should have no human rights, as they are not human beings at this point. They should be tortured on principle, regardless of whether it brings results.
 
Polaris said:
They're Wahhabist fundamentalist radicals at best, al-Qaida at worst.
Click to expand...

Or possibly the victims of unscupulous bounty hunters paid by the US to capture Taliban members. Not terrorists, not fundamentalists, merely aid workers.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/GBlegalLimbo.html

Polaris said:
They should have no human rights, as they are not human beings at this point. They should be tortured on principle, regardless of whether it brings results.
Click to expand...

I disagreee, even if they were allowed a trial and it were established beyond reasonable doubt that they were guilty of heinous crimes of terrorism, they still have human rights. When we deny them this we ourselves become less human.

The cruelty you speak of violates even animal rights.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom