Waterboarding Rocks!

[Cicero]

I don't know what other methods might be useful, but that's probably because I'm a teacher and not a professional interrogator. Luckily for my case, that's completely irrelevant. All I'm arguing is that it's unknown to the public whether or not torture actually produces anything useful that can't be gotten otherwise. I've heard ostensibly skilled professional interrogators argue both sides of the question with equal force, so I gather that there is at least enough uncertainty, even among those who do know the truth to render torture unjustified.

Abu Sabaya, leader of al Qaeda-linked guerrilla group Abu Sayyaf, confirms what methods will work on captured Muslim fundamentalists to get them to reveal secret information.

"Brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship."

 

[Dr Adequate]

Wrong. He admits that the techniques used elicited useful information. What he says we don't know is if other techniques could have elicited the same information.

Yes, methods including waterboarding elicited useful information. Do we know that methods not including waterboarding would not have yielded similarly useful information? Well, according to the source on which the OP was based, no we don't.

By analogy, if I was investigating a scientific question, and my methods of research included both the scientific method and standing on one leg and whistling The Star-Spangled Banner, then I would probably elicit useful information. But this would tell us nothing about the benefits of unipedal whistling of patriotic anthems.

 

[A'isha]

Except that Maddow made the whole thing up. No Japanese tried at the Tokyo Trials was hanged for waterboarding.

You're right, no Japanese war criminal was executed for that. Just sentenced to 15 years hard labor for it.

Defendant: Asano, Yukio


Docket Date: 53/ May 1 - 28, 1947, Yokohama, Japan

Charge: Violation of the Laws and Customs of War: 1. Did willfully and unlawfully mistreat and torture PWs. 2. Did unlawfully take and convert to his own use Red Cross packages and supplies intended for PWs.

Specifications:beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; water torture; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward

Verdict: 15 years CHL

"Water torture" is what they called the technique now known as waterboarding.

Abu Sabaya, leader of al Qaeda-linked guerrilla group Abu Sayyaf, confirms what methods will work on captured Muslim fundamentalists to get them to reveal secret information.

And if we can't trust the leaders of al-Qaeda offshoot organizations, who can we trust?

 

[gdnp]

Yes, methods including waterboarding elicited useful information. Do we know that methods not including waterboarding would not have yielded similarly useful information? Well, according to the source on which the OP was based, no we don't.

Saying that torture can elicit useful information is like saying that human infants are an excellent source of meat.

 

[Peephole]

Waterboarding!

Republican House Minority Leader, John Boehner:

Last week, they released these memos outlining torture techniques. That was clearly a political decision and ignored the advice of their Director of National Intelligence and their CIA director.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/boehner-memos-outline-tor_n_190547.html

Republican senator, former presidential candidate and torture victim, John McCain:

Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot and being used on Buddhist monks as we speak," said McCain after a campaign stop at Dordt College here.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/26/mccain-mukasey-torture/

Republican senator, Lindsay Grahman:

Water-boarding, in my opinion, would cause extreme physical and psychological pain and suffering, and it very much could run afoul of the War Crimes Act," [Republican Lindsay Grahman] said, referring to a 1996 law. "It could very much open people up to prosecution under the War Crimes Act, as well as be a violation of the Detainees Treatment Act.

http://www.correntewire.com/cheney_waterboarding_a_no_brainer_graham_waterboarding_a_war_crime

Bush Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage:

Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, told Al Jazeera English television in an interview airing Wednesday that waterboarding is torture.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090416/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_waterboarding

Bush Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell:

If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture," McConnell told the magazine.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/13/dni-mcconnell-suggests-waterboarding-is-torture/

Bush counselor of the Department of State, Philip D. Zelikow:

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/21/the_olc_torture_memos_thoughts_from_a_dissenter

Bush Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge:

"There's just no doubt in my mind — under any set of rules — waterboarding is torture," Tom Ridge said Friday in an interview. Ridge had offered the same opinion earlier in the day to members of the American Bar Association at a homeland security conference.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22735168/

Bush head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury:

Each year, in the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the United States condemns coercive interrogation techniques and other practices employed by other countries. Certain of the techniques the United States has condemned appear to bear some resemblance to some of the CIA interrogation techniques. In their discussion of Indonesia, for example, the reports list as “psychological torture” conduct that involves “food and sleep deprivation,” but give no specific information as to what these techniques involve. In their discussion of Egypt, the reports list as “methods of torture” “stripping and blindfolding victims; suspending victims from a ceiling or doorframe with feed just touching the floor; beating victims [with various objects]; … and dousing victims with cold water.” See also, e.g., Algeria (describing the “chiffon” method, which involves “placing a rag drenched in dirty water in someone’s mouth”); Iran (counting sleep deprivation as either torture or severe prisoner abuse); Syria (discussing sleep deprivation and “having cold water thrown on” detainees as either torture or “ill-treatment”). The State Department’s inclusion of nudity, water dousing, sleep deprivation, and food deprivation among the conduct it condemns is significant and provides some indication of an executive foreign relations tradition condemning the use of these techniques.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/SeeXtKpDOYI/AAAAAAAABx4/_akx896tKBI/s1600-h/bradbury2.png

U.S. President, Barack Obama:

"Vice President Cheney I think continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures and from my view waterboarding is torture.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/obama-on-cheney.html

U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder:

Under questioning, Holder said he would classify "waterboarding" as torture and move to bar the controversial interrogation practice, during which detainees are subjected to simulated drowning.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99404524

Waterboarding victim:

The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning, choking, vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with ever-changing force. To put it mildly, it was ghastly, quite the worst experience of my life. There were occasional intervals for interrogation. How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of some days, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article3476414.ece

Another waterboarding victim:

Well, I have described the waterboarding I was submitted to. And no one can say, having passed through it, that this was not torture, especially when he has endured other types of torture—burning, electricity and beating, and so on. So I am really astonished that this is a big question in the States about this, because the real question is not waterboarding or not waterboarding, it’s the use of torture in such a war, and this use of torture, torture in general.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/5/french_journalist_henri_alleg_describes_his

Yet another waterboarding victim:

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

Waterboarding practitioner:

As a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.

I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions...i_know_waterboarding_is_torture__because.html

UN chief torture investigator, Manfred Nowak:

The UN's chief torture investigator criticised the US government yesterday for defending the use of "waterboarding", an interrogation method often described as a form of torture.

Manfred Nowak, the special rapporteur on torture, said: "This is absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law. [The] time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/07/humanrights.usa

More than 100 professors of law and legal studies:

Waterboarding is torture. It causes severe physical suffering in the form of reflexive choking, gagging, and the feeling of suffocation. It may cause severe pain in some cases. If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/04/05/open-letter-attorney-general-alberto-gonzales

Four retired JAGs:

In the course of the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of President Bush's nominee for the post of Attorney General, there has been much discussion, but little clarity, about the legality of "waterboarding" under United States and international law. We write Because this issue above all demands clarity: Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.

http://crooksandliars.com/2007/11/0...-is-inhumane-it-is-torture-and-it-is-illegal/

Human Rights Watch:

Waterboarding is intended to cause a victim to believe he is about to die, and is similar to a mock execution. Earlier this year, in March 2005, Goss justified waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique” during a Senate hearing. Other Bush administration officials, when questioned about waterboarding, have refused to rule it out.

There is no doubt that waterboarding is torture, despite the administration’s reluctance to say so,” said Roth.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/11/20/cia-whitewashing-torture

Amnesty International:

"What's really a no-brainer is that no U.S. official, much less a Vice President, should champion torture. Vice President Cheney's advocacy of water-boarding sets a new human rights low at a time when human rights is already scraping the bottom of the Bush administration barrel.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGUSA20061026002

People defending waterboarding and other torture techniques used by Bush, live in an absolute fantasy world.

 

[Praktik]

then there's the question, if this is so damn effective, then why did they need to do it 183 times on KSM??

If that's effective, its "War on Drugs" effective!

 

[Peephole]

Awesome, torture isn't torture if you perform enough of it!

 

[leftysergeant]

Except you can't know with 100% certainty that he will lie under duress. You have to admit there IS some chance he won't lie. There are many historical examples where valuable intel has been obtained through torture.

Linky?

NOW!

Don't try to BS us any more. PROVE IT. Those of us who have remained human throughout this war are sick of hearing that blather. Absurd assertions demand staggering proof. Bring it.

Sorry, but I really don't think you can claim any high and mighty ground to stand on here, TK.

Tu quoque.

The only smoking gun is the dimbulb who will use that excuse as a justification for an ever-increasingly-vile list of crimes as he leads us down the path to the slave pens.

Therer has never been such a case. There have been nations destroyed because they accepted the kind of behavior that animals like Rummy, Yoo and Cheney have been bragging about.

I would rather risk the nebulous threat of harm from foreign operatives than live in the kind of cess pool the animals who ran the country the last eight years were trying to dig for us.

 

[Upchurch]

then there's the question, if this is so damn effective, then why did they need to do it 183 times on KSM??

The first time was for information. The next 182 times were for kicks and grins.

 

[Peephole]

You're right, no Japanese war criminal was executed for that. Just sentenced to 15 years hard labor for it.

More:

Among the numerous examples, Wallach cites one involving four Japanese defendants who were tried before a U.S. military commission at Yokohama, Japan, in 1947 for their treatment of American and Allied prisoners. Wallach writes, in the case of United States of America vs. Hideji Nakamura, Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata and Takeo Kita, "water torture was among the acts alleged in the specifications ... and it loomed large in the evidence presented against them."

Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment and torture of Morris Killough "by beating and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils." Other American prisoners, including Thomas Armitage, received similar treatment, according to the allegations.

Armitage described his ordeal: "They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about 2 gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness."

Hata was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor, and the other defendants were convicted and given long stints at hard labor as well.
Wallach also found a 1983 case out of San Jacinto County, Texas, in which James Parker, the county sheriff, and three deputies were criminally charged for handcuffing suspects to chairs, draping towels over their faces and pouring water over the towel until a confession was elicited. One victim described the experience this way: "I thought I was going to be strangled to death. ... I couldn't breath."

The sheriff pleaded guilty and his deputies went to trial where they were convicted of civil rights violations. All received long prison sentences. U.S. District Judge James DeAnda told the former sheriff at sentencing, "The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country."

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/22/Columns/We_sentenced_Japanese.shtml

Within days of liberation, on Monday September 3, 1945, the surviving civilian internees in Singapore, appointed a "commission of inquiry: into what happened to the former inmates at the hands of the kempeitai. This is how the commission described “the water treatment”

...

The man who authorized those techniques at the Singapore YMCA, Lt. Col. Sumida, was sentenced to hang. Sumida, in his statement during the trial said, “I felt the state of peace and order and this serious incident were related and that a thorough measure should be taken to prevent the recurrence of such serious incidents.”

Six other members of the kempeitai plus an interpreter were sentenced to hang. Three were sentenced to life, including one interpreter called “the fat American” (he was originally from California) One received 15 years, and one kempeitai and one interpreter eight.

http://robinrowland.com/garret/2005/11/waterboarding-is-war-crime.html

 

[Cicero]

You're right, no Japanese war criminal was executed for that. Just sentenced to 15 years hard labor for it.



"Water torture" is what they called the technique now known as waterboarding.



And if we can't trust the leaders of al-Qaeda offshoot organizations, who can we trust?

Too bad Maddow couldn't be bothered with checking the facts before making a fool of herself. The CIA interrogators did not use their subjects for ashtrays either. However, Asano did not serve his 15 year sentence at hard labor.

"All of the uncondemned Class A war criminals were set free by Gen. MacArthur in 1947 and 1948. On March 7, 1950, MacArthur issued a directive that reduced the sentences by one-third for good behavior and authorized the parole of those who had received life sentences after fifteen years. By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals, including A-, B- and C-class were released from prison and politically rehabilitated."


Why should we doubt Sabaya when what he said proved to be true?

 

[Praktik]

funny to see Cicero's hair-splitting regarding legal precedents involving water torture come directly after peephole's informative post

 

[Cicero]

Saying that torture can elicit useful information is like saying that human infants are an excellent source of meat.

That's what Jonathan Swift said.

"A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."

Better leave satire, as well as analogies, to the professionals.

 

[Dr Adequate]

There are many historical examples where valuable intel has been obtained through torture.

For example, it helped us to identify millions of witches. Never mind that what they confessed to was actually impossible, at least we caught 'em.

Stalin, too, used the same techniques to identify the saboteurs who were taking capitalist gold to wreck the Soviet Union. About twenty million of them ... I bet you didn't know that capitalists had that much gold.

And Bush's torturerers, as we have seen, extracted confessions of Iraqi complicity in 9/11. Never mind the fact that there's no evidence for that ... if you hurt someone for long enough, they'll still confess to it.

Torture's great, isn't it? It makes people say what you want to hear.

 

[Cicero]

funny to see Cicero's hair-splitting regarding legal precedents involving water torture come directly after peephole's informative post

Informative? Peephole's regurgitated blather has zero to do with the three detainess waterboarded by the CIA.

 

[Dr Adequate]

That's what Jonathan Swift said.

Ah yes, Swift.

Three hundred years ago there were conservatives who could write well and who had a sense of humor.

I wonder what happened to them?

 

[Praktik]

Informative? Peephole's regurgitated blather has zero to do with the three detainess waterboarded by the CIA.

Except that you were basically attempting to water-down (excuse the pun) the precedent of the Japanese example of people criminally prosecuted for water torture - and then peephole provided two other situations where people were criminally prosecuted for water torture.

Talk about diluting the potency of your tactic!!

 

[Cicero]

Ah yes, Swift.

Three hundred years ago there were conservatives who could write well and who had a sense of humor.

I wonder what happened to them?

They moved to the colonies.

 

[A'isha]

Too bad Maddow couldn't be bothered with checking the facts before making a fool of herself.

Maddow's error doesn't have anything to do with whether the US treated waterboarding as a war crime back then or not.

The CIA interrogators did not use their subjects for ashtrays either.

So what? Waterboarding was part of the litany of charges against him; that there were also other charges is irrelevant.

Rape isn't any less of a felony if someone is also charged with murder at the same time.

However, Asano did not serve his 15 year sentence at hard labor.

"All of the uncondemned Class A war criminals were set free by Gen. MacArthur in 1947 and 1948. On March 7, 1950, MacArthur issued a directive that reduced the sentences by one-third for good behavior and authorized the parole of those who had received life sentences after fifteen years. By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals, including A-, B- and C-class were released from prison and politically rehabilitated."

You are aware that commutation/reduction of sentence is not a pardon or exoneration of the convicted person on the original charge, right?

But hey, I'll tell you what. Let's do to every member of the CIA who waterboarded prisoners what was done to the Japanese convicted by the US of waterboarding in your little quoted paragraph there - sentence them after conviction to 15 years of hard labor, then three years into their sentences cut those sentences to ten years of hard labor.

I'm fine with that. How about you?

Why should we doubt Sabaya when what he said proved to be true?

Except we don't know that. Or do you only trust Admiral Blair when he agrees with your preconcieved notions?

 

[Cicero]

Except that you were basically attempting to water-down (excuse the pun) the precedent of the Japanese example of people criminally prosecuted for water torture - and then peephole provided two other situations where people were criminally prosecuted for water torture.

Talk about diluting the potency of your tactic!!

Raychill Maddow said Japanese soldiers convicted of waterboarding were hanged. False

Yukio Asano Hideji Nakamura, Seitara Hata and Takeo Kita served 15-25 years at hard labor for waterboarding. False

Peephole's examples of Texans being waterboarded by police departments is fine, but what does that have to do with the CIA interrogating terrorist detainees in GITMO? They are not protected by the Bill of Rights.