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Waterboarding Rocks!

Holy ****, good luck to the torture advocates on trying to spin this:
When he rescinded authority for GTMO to use aggressive interrogation techniques, Secretary Rumsfeld directed the DoD General Counsel to set up a "Detainee Interrogation Working Group" within the Department "to assess the legal, policy, and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the United States Armed Forces in the war on terrorism."

...

Of the 36 recommended interrogation techniques in the February 4, 2003 draft, 26 techniques were recommended for general use and 10 techniques were recommended for use with certain limitations. The 26 techniques recommended in the February 4,2003 report for general use included 19 techniques from Army Field Manual 34-52 or its predecessor, and seven techniques that did not comport with the Field Manual, i.e., hooding, mild physical contact, dietary manipulation, environmental manipulation, sleep adjustment, false flag, and threat of transfer. The report also recommended approval of 10 additional "exceptional" techniques for use with certain limitations. The 10 "exceptional" techniques included isolation, prolonged interrogations, forced grooming, prolonged standing, sleep deprivation, physical training, face slap/stomach slap, removal of clothing, increasing anxiety by use of aversions, and the waterboard.

...

Each of the 36 recommended techniques was included in a color-coded matrix or a "stoplight" chart and designated as either "green," "yellow," or "red" to signify the Working Group's assessment of legal and policy considerations.

Waterboarding was the only technique evaluated as "red" in any area of consideration in the February 4, 2003 report, but the Working Group report continued to recommend at that time that it be approved for use. That "red" designation meant that the Working Group determined that there was a major issue in law or policy with respect to waterboarding "that cannot be eliminated." The Working Group rated the waterboard as red under U.S. domestic law and the prohibition against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the Torture Convention. The Working Group also indicated that the waterboard was not consistent with historical U.S. forces' interrogation role; prior U.S. public statements; or major partner nation reviews. In addition, the report indicated that the technique could have an effect on the treatment of captured U.S. forces, could potentially affect detainee prosecutions; was "inconsistent with modern U.S. military perceptions in decency in dealing with prisoners" and was "a significant departure from contemporary American military approach to the laws of war." The February 4, 2003 Working Group Report gave the waterboard its only overall red rating and recommended that the approval authority for the technique be "no lower than the Secretary of Defense."

http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final_April%2022%202009.pdf
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Or - the corollary --that the suspects know nothing and the interrogators are receiving enormous pressure from HQ that they must attain results.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
 
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Peephole said:
Are you blind? You are denying stuff that is literally written down in front of your eyes.

Simply incredible.
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Who is denying Japanese were charged with torture and murder at the Tokyo Trials? You are the one buying into the Maddow nonsense about them being hanged for waterboarding.
 
Cicero said:
Who is denying Japanese were charged with torture and murder at the Tokyo Trials? You are the one buying into the Maddow nonsense about them being hanged for waterboarding.
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Wimpy old coot had their sentences quietly commuted after they were SENTENCED to hang. Flatulating into the wind again, are you?
 
leftysergeant said:
Wimpy old coot had their sentences quietly commuted after they were SENTENCED to hang. Flatulating into the wind again, are you?
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Noooo. Nobody was even sentenced to hang for waterboarding. Those Japanese who were sentenced to hang for the Kempeitai murders:

Accussed
Prisoner 1 : Lt-Col. Sumida Haruzo, death sentence
Prisoner 2 : W. O. Monai Tadamori, death sentence
Prisoner 5 : Sgt-Maj. Makizono Masuo, death sentence
Prisoner 6 : Sgt-Maj. Terada Tako, death sentence
Prisoner 7 : Sgt. Nozawa Toichiro, death sentence
Prisoner 8 : Sgt-Maj Tsujio Shiger, death sentence
Prisoner 10 : Sgt-Maj Morita Shozo, death sentence
Prisoner 19 : Interpreter Toh Swee Koon, death sentence

were hanged.
 
Cicero said:
Because wholesale beatings using any body part or blunt instrument and cigarette burnings were de rigueur treatment of POW's by the Japanese. You are the one who is suggesting that waterboarding was the sine qua non for harsher sentences.
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Every single defendant I looked at who was charged with waterboarding among their other crimes recieved a harsher sentence than those who were charged with the exact same (or really really similar) crimes save for the waterboarding.

Either this is a truly, truly remarkable coincidence, or waterboarding affected the harshness of the sentence handed down.



Was it impossible for a Japanese officer/soldier/guard to waterboard a prisoner but not apply any physical beating and burning in the process?
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You apparently don't think so:
Cicero said:
The CIA interrogators did not use their subjects for ashtrays either.
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Praktik said:
But just as BeaChooser sees the idea, held by many upstanding and acutely intelligent individuals with real world experience in interrogations, that torture is always a crime and nothing can be used to justify it as proof of a detachment from reality - I'm sure many of them would see the invocation of a scenario lifted directly from a fictional TV show as something of dubious relevance to "reality".
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What's the problem, Praktik? Are you also having difficulty answering a simple "yes or no" question? Seems to me that regardless of whether you think the scenario is plausible or not, you should be able to answer the question. So give it a try. If you could save a hundred thousand lives by simply applying non-lethal pain to an individual, would you? No more skirting the question. Just answer it.

Praktik said:
The real answer is to uphold the criminalization of torture in all cases - if in the unlikely event that BeAChooser's fiction comes to pass in reality and someone tortures the individual (and that torture somehow gets a martyr to crack and reveal helpful info when he knows all he has to do is last 10 hours), then the officials who ordered the torture and the agents who implemented it can explain their rationale in front of a judge.
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That's all fine and good. But I'm not trying to establish a procedure here. I'm simply trying to understand the relative value that some of the posters on this forum assign to the lives of hundred of thousands of innocent people (men, women AND children) versus some non-lethal pain or mental stress applied to a likely low-life prisoner. You should understand that we probably don't have 100% certainty that the person has such information. Or that if we apply pressure he/she will break. What if torturing the individual doesn't prevent the bomb from going off. Were the individuals still justified in making the attempt to save those people through such means? Your answer says more about you than them. I'm really not interested in what the judge or a jury would find.

Praktik said:
We don't have legalized murder because in some cases it is done in self-defense - one outlier can't be used to create a general rule. If the murder was in self-defense then that gets proven in a court of law and the sentence is reduced or the defendant is found guilty of a lesser charge.
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But we aren't talking about a "murderer" here. We are talking about an enemy combatant. And we don't have our lawyers charge or even contemplate charging soldiers with murder when they shoot an enemy combatant who is preparing to fire a weapon at our people. The enemy combatant forfeits his life by the act. We don't try the soldiers even if they didn't give that combatant a warning or inform him of his *rights* before shooting him.

This hypothetical prisoner, whether you want to admit or not, is a enemy combatant in an ongoing war ... granted, a new type of war (perhaps that's part of the problem here). He's an enemy combatant who knows where a terrible weapon has been placed by his side in that war which may potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people ... more people than were killed in an entire war in many historical cases. I think under the circumstances, the lawyers ought to mind their own business and let the military/CIA do what it has to do to keep the country safe.

And by the way, we aren't even talking about applying lethal measures against this prisoner. We are talking about doing less harm to this prisoner than most enemy combatants have done to them on the battlefield. Hey ... maybe that's the problem? Maybe you folks don't believe there is a war going on or that our cities might become a battlefield? :D
 
Cicero said:
Who is denying Japanese were charged with torture and murder at the Tokyo Trials? You are the one buying into the Maddow nonsense about them being hanged for waterboarding.
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Yes, they were convicted for murder and waterboarding, as I've said about five times now.

You're denying waterboarding is a crime. Even though every international organisation, legal scholars, victims, perpetrators, etc... and even the U.S. government under Bush (in internal discussions) claim it is a crime.

Your political convictions (whatever they may be) are making you completely delusional. I suggest you stop and seriously think about what you are defending.
 
Peephole said:
Yes, they were convicted for murder and waterboarding, as I've said about five times now.

You're denying waterboarding is a crime. Even though every international organisation, legal scholars, victims, perpetrators, etc... and even the U.S. government under Bush (in internal discussions) claim it is a crime.

Your political convictions (whatever they may be) are making you completely delusional. I suggest you stop and seriously think about what you are defending.
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No. You were trying to prop up Maddow's claim that Japanese convicted of waterboarding were hanged for waterboarding. Now you are saying they were convicted for murder and waterboarding? No ****. Who is arguing they were not?
 
BeAChooser said:
To save hundreds of thousands of lives, as in the example I postulated? No.
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And in the bizarre hypothetical you cited, several of us have shown that you can't possibly know that torture will save lives.

Just so we're clear on this. The rule of law means nothing to you? As far as you're concerned, if you think something is justified, that's good enough reason to break U.S. law.
 
The thing is if we accept torture as a legitimate means to extract information to save lives (1 or 1,000,000 - not sure the number is relevant really) we can have no complaint if say a captured coalition soldier is tortured to obtain information on troop movements in Afghanistan to save Taliban lives. It is the same principle reversed. We can support the UN position on torture and always seek to bring the perpetrators to justice or we can equivocate. If we choose the latter option we simply turn the clock back to a darker time.
 
ANTPogo said:
Every single defendant I looked at who was charged with waterboarding among their other crimes recieved a harsher sentence than those who were charged with the exact same (or really really similar) crimes save for the waterboarding.

Either this is a truly, truly remarkable coincidence, or waterboarding affected the harshness of the sentence handed down.





You apparently don't think so:
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Out of the 5700 Tokyo Trial defendants you looked at 4. That's hardly 9 out 10 dentists prefer Trident.
 
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What does it matter what the sentence was in war crime trials following WWII where we prosecuted people for water torture (among other crimes)?

Is someone suggesting that if we didn't convict anyone of this crime then that it's not a crime now?

On the other thread I mentioned that a Texas sheriff and some of his deputies were prosecuted (not under the torture law) for using some for of water torture to coerce confessions.

Again, what difference does it make anyway whether we have prosecuted the crime before or not?

Waterboard is torture because it abundantly satisfies the definition of torture. The U.S. Code specifically says that one type of mental pain that constitutes torture is "the threat of imminent death" which is the whole point of waterboarding.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Yes. It's illegal and immoral to torture under any circumstances.
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Well, there you go folks. Here's someone who under no circumstances would apply non-lethal pain or mental distress to save a life. Or a hundred thousand lives. Or a million lives. Or the lives of everyone on the planet. Or the lives of every living creature on earth.

Now there's a scenario for you. Ever see the movie "The Satan Bug"? Not all that farfetched given advances in genetic and nanotech engineering. The idea is that some mad genius comes up with a virus (or something like it) that will kill all life if it's released into the environment ... with a 100% effectiveness. He smuggles a vial of it out of a secret government laboratory and threatens to unleash it if certain things (political and monetary in nature) aren't done. And all that stands between him and the destruction of all life on earth is Mr Defender of Laws and Morality, JoeTheJuggler. Joe captures one of the mad genius' minions. But he's too squeamish ... sitting on too high a moral and legal pedestal ... to even contemplate applying a little pain or mental distress to someone who might know the whereabouts of that vial. Under no circumstances would he do that. Like you said, Joe. Wow. You'd risk it all ... and I mean literally all ... just to be *morally* and legally superior to the rest of us. Personally, I think you'd be demonstrating something entirely different. :D
 
BeAChooser said:
This hypothetical prisoner, whether you want to admit or not, is a enemy combatant in an ongoing war ... granted, a new type of war (perhaps that's part of the problem here). He's an enemy combatant who knows where a terrible weapon has been placed by his side in that war which may potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people..
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Don't keep spewing non-sense about something that has never happened in order to justify a war crime that has happened.


That ignorant or mendacious dirtbags like Yoo and Rummy say something is so does not make it so. that an insane old twit like Rummy says it is so actually, to me, indicates that it is less likely to be so. Rummy lies and confabulates a lot.

I think under the circumstances, the lawyers ought to mind their own business and let the military/CIA do what it has to do to keep the country safe.
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But they aren't keeping us safe, no matter what the nosferatu from Wyoming claims.

Maybe you folks don't believe there is a war going on or that our cities might become a battlefield? :D
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You put too much stock in the maunderings of the political party least capable of conducting a war. Ther only Republicans I have seen who are worth a used match during a time of war are those who are actually carrying a rifle. Rummy and Cheney are wrong, 24/7/365.
 
Did the rule of law apply when it was considered legal or only now when it considered illegal?


But there is little precedent for prosecuting government lawyers who provided arguably bad legal opinions. Moreover, Mr. Yoo, the memorandums’ principal author, had espoused idiosyncratic views about presidential power before joining the Justice Department, so it would be difficult to prove that he did not believe what he was writing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/politics/23legal.html?ref=global-home
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Originally Posted by Praktik
if it truly did prevent a dirty bomb attack I'm sure the sentence would be lenient or suspended.

Good point.
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Which raises a question. The only reason torture is deemed illegal is because it is deemed immoral. If the sentence is lenient or suspended, doesn't that say the jury and judge found torture not to be all that immoral in this circumstance? And if that's true, then the C.A.T. statement that torture under any circumstance is immoral and illegal is proven false.

For this very reason I hope that Obama and company do charge and try these lawyers in this matter. Because I fully believe that a jury will find the defendants not guilty when they consider the fact that 8 years have gone by since 9/11 with no major attacks on the US and hear numerous officials testifying that one reason for that was the use of waterboarding. Also, the jury will hear past statements by many liberals who are now riding this high moral hobby horse in an attempt to get back at Bush, that contradict their current expressions of disgust. When they find the defendents not guilty, perhaps it will be time to withdraw our signature from the C.A.T. Yes, it will be interesting to watch a debate between adults living in the real world ... and children living in some imaginary liberal utopia.
 
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