Waterboarding Rocks!

[BeAChooser]

It always amazes me how much pride some people take into sinking to the level of the enemy they hate the most.

Do you really think that by waterboarding someone, we've sunk to their level?

 

[MikeSun5]

PTSD is permanent.

I do suggest that you refrain from further comment on things of which you know nothing relevant.

 

[BeAChooser]

I also have to wonder how many of these defenders of torture (that's you, BAC) would be willing to have the techniques applied to themselves?

So MM, since you've decided to enter the fray, let's see if you'll answer my question.

Would you inflict non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one apparently guilty person if you thought doing so stood a good chance of saving hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who will likely die within the hour if what that person knows isn't obtained? Yes or no?

 

[MikeSun5]

Would you inflict non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one apparently guilty person if you thought doing so stood a good chance of saving hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who will likely die within the hour if what that person knows isn't obtained? Yes or no?

Question wasn't posed to me, but I'm going to address it anyway.
I'm most definitely opposed to physically attacking or hurting someone to get information, but if doing so would (with 100% certainty) save even one life, how could you not? What a crap decision to make.
It's like that old philosophical question of the runaway train with one track having one person tied to it, and the other track having three and you're in charge of the switchboard. What's the lesser of two evils?

 

[Dr Adequate]

Would you inflict non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one apparently guilty person if you thought doing so stood a good chance of saving hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who will likely die within the hour if what that person knows isn't obtained? Yes or no?

Would you sketch out for us the set of actions, short of killing even more hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that you would not commit to avert such a tragedy? If you can't come up with anything, then I still find your question kinda pointless.

Sure, as one with strong utilitarian tendencies, I guess I should say that undertaking to do something horrible is better than not doing it if the consequences of not doing it would be even more horrible.

But then this has no special relevance to torture in particular, any more than it has to rape or genocide. We could always invent a hypothetical situation which would justify any action. But this does not prevent us from deeming some actions illegal, even though we can invent purely hypothetical situations in which they would be justified.

 

[BeAChooser]

Back on page 4, BAC posed a hypothetical. Essentially, it was this (my paraphrase):

suppose there's a terrorist action being planned, we have in custody a captive who we are certain has information which would enable us to stop the action and save a large number of lives, and there are only a few hours left until the action will occur. Do you use conventional interrogation methods to obtain information which can prevent the action, or do you attempt to torture the information out of the captive?

Why do you need to rephrase my hypothetical? So that you can substitute the word "torture" for "temporary, non-lethal pain"? And you haven't proven that there are conventional interrogation methods that could obtain the information in a few hours. At one point you even called those methods "unproven". According to the sources I provided, KSM was subjected to conventional interrogation methods for months and didn't break. But 90 seconds of waterboarding broke him.

On page 10 I added a second hypothetical:
Suppose there's a terrorist action being planned, we have in custody a captive who we are certain has information which would enable us to stop the action (and save a large number of lives), and there is a month or more before the action will occur. Do you use conventional interrogation methods to obtain information which can prevent the action, or do you attempt to torture the information out of the captive?

My answer for the second hypothetical is that we should use conventional methods, as these methods have a good track record

And if you in fact know that there is a month or more before action will occur I'm not suggesting you start out with *torture*. But what if after 29 days, your conventional methods still haven't elicited any information from your prisoner? What if like KSM, your prisoner remains so defiant that when you ask him about the attack (that you believe is just days or hours away now), he tells you "soon, you will know". Would you use torture then, NL? Or would you still be so against inflicting some non-lethal temporary pain or discomfort that you'd take the chance that very large number of people would die?

Originally Posted by Nova Land
The former hypothetical is extremely rare.

Perhaps. Note that such a situation could easily have arisen just before the 9/11 attack with just a minor tweaking of the facts.

"Easily"? Perhaps. But I note that it didn't.

Perhaps only because of numerous blunders by our side. Hopefully now we would be more vigilant and actually have detained some of those suspicious characters. And given that they were enrolled in flight school ...

the only place to date where such scenarios have been known to happen.

And are you privy to everything that has happened in this war on terror? Or will you grant that there might be events that haven't become public out of fear of the panic they might cause?

Likewise it is true that alien spacecraft may have crash-landed on earth and the remains may be stored in a military hangar.

You can argue logically and reasonably in this debate or you can resort to this sort of argument. It's your choice. The fact is you don't know every thing that has transpired because the US government (except when democrats and the NY Times get hold of secrets) is not in the habit of revealing everything that happens. There are still secrets about WW2, believe it or not. So why you would think you know everything about this war, when it's in many ways an information war that depends on information remaining secret, is beyond me.

Similarly it's possible the 9-11 attack was actually a plot carried out by our own government, as some 9-11 conspiracy theorists suggest.

Do you really believe that?

 

[scissorhands]

Waterboarding is for pussies.
KSM wouldnt have needed more than one application of these techniques...

http://www.listaholic.com/12-of-the-most-horrifying-torture-devices-in-history.html

All this fuss about a technique that "scares someone into thinking they are drowning" is a bit pathetic.

I particularly like this one...

1. Knee Splitter

A popular torture device during the Inquisition, the knee splitter does what it says: split victims' knees and render them useless. Built from two spiked wood blocks, the knee splitter is placed on top of and behind the knee of its victims. Two large screws connecting the blocks are then turned, causing the two blocks to close towards each other and effectively destroy a victim's knee.

Hmmmm, nice!

I would happily use any of these instruments of torture if the information extracted saved even one innocent life.

 

[BeAChooser]

In order to demonstrate that torture might be justified in certain situations, you need to show that it will achieve a better outcome than not using torture would

I cite the case of KSM and statements made by his interrogators. He remained defiant after months of conventional interrogation but broke in 90 seconds when waterboarding was begun. And the hypothetical situation is one where you have only hours to learn the truth. And you haven't proven that any conventional technique can break someone in hours, much less 90 seconds.

What you have not shown is that torture is effective in obtaining useful information which the questioner does not already possess.

Again, there are CIA personnel saying that is the case. You can choose to disbelieve them, and believe in the interrogators you cite but until Obama releases the actually interrogation reports and tapes, we aren't going to know. Given the history of the last 2 decades, I think there is just as much reason to think the folks on your side of this debate are playing politics as the folks I have cited.

In the example which opens this thread, for instance, torture was able to obtain information from KSM about the LA library tower plot -- several months after the plot had already been foiled using information obtained through conventional interrogation methods.

As I pointed out above, the LA library tower plot was only one of several situations that the Bush administration claimed was defused as a result of waterboarding and the like. The only way we are now going to get to the bottom of this is to see the reports and tapes of the interrogations and match what was said to what what was claimed and later happened vis a vis various plots. If it turns out that the Bush officials lied, then we clean house and you might garner a few converts to your politics. If it turns out that the Bush administration was right, would you revise your views about the efficacy of waterboarding and the like in some situations? And since we don't seem to be able to trust our elected representatives on either side of the aisle, or the press for that matter, these reports and whatever other data supports them should simply be made public in their entirety. How about that?

 

[leftysergeant]

So MM, since you've decided to enter the fray, let's see if you'll answer my question.

Would you inflict non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one apparently guilty person if you thought doing so stood a good chance of saving hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who will likely die within the hour if what that person knows isn't obtained? Yes or no?

What has some crap that has never happened to do with the validity of torutring people against who you do not have a valid and airtight case of anything?

The effects are not temporary. Can you not get your petty, viscious mind around that?

And what is it doing to the minds of our soldiers when some dirtbag tels them to take part in torturing people?

Is there any possibility that the maladaptive behavior will spill over into other areas?

Those of us with military experience will hasten to assure you, YOU CAN BET YOUR KUNDINGI IT WILL.

Do try to learn some military science relevant to treatment of prisoners.

 

[applecorped]

Waterboarding is for pussies.
KSM wouldnt have needed more than one application of these techniques...

http://www.listaholic.com/12-of-the-most-horrifying-torture-devices-in-history.html

All this fuss about a technique that "scares someone into thinking they are drowning" is a bit pathetic.

I particularly like this one...



Hmmmm, nice!

I would happily use any of these instruments of torture if the information extracted saved even one innocent life.

Be careful, you might be accused of being immoral.

 

[leftysergeant]

What is the problem? Are you doubting that the treatment will result in PTSD or are you just admitting that you are flat busted on the professional opinion of one better trained than the torutre advocates here to know what the result of sub-human interrogation tactics can be?

I have yet to see one person who really understands detainee operations advocating for waterboarding.

 

[MikeSun5]

I would happily use any of these instruments of torture if the information extracted saved even one innocent life.

And if it didn't save a life, would you put his knees back together and apologize? Once you start mutilating someone, you can't exactly unring that bell.
Methinks you'll get jumped on a bit for a comment like that...

 

[Dorian Gray]

This torture or non-lethal whatever, as you like, only works if you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the person you're doing it to is in the possession of useful information. However, if you have an innocent person, they don't have anything useful - yet they want the torture to stop, so they'll invent things just to get it to stop. And if you have a guilty person, they have something useful, but whatever they tell you may be just as invented as the information obtained from an innocent person.

This is why torture is ridiculously ineffective. It's also why any invented scenario where torture leads to saving lives is exactly and precisely as ridiculous as an invented scenario where raping children leads to saving lives. And if I've lost some of you at this point with the 'raping children' thing, then you understand how disgusting, wrong and shocking torture seems to the rest of us. But hey, I'm betting some knucklehead will build a scenario where raping a terrorist's child to get them to talk is good for America.

And people like you are what's wrong with America.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Please note the source I provided in an earlier post indicated that months of conventional interrogation was totally ineffective with regards to KSM and some of the other al-qaeda operatives who were captured.

No, that's not what your source said.

Yes it is. Let me just repost what some sources said:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121002091.html

Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida, the first high-ranking al-Qaeda member captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, broke in less than a minute after he was subjected to the technique and began providing interrogators with information that led to the disruption of several planned attacks, said John Kiriakou, who served as a CIA interrogator in Pakistan.

... snip ...

In an interview, Kiriakou said he did not witness Abu Zubaida's waterboarding but was part of the interrogation team that questioned him in a hospital in Pakistan for weeks after his capture in that country in the spring of 2002.

He described Abu Zubaida as ideologically zealous, defiant and uncooperative -- until the day in mid-summer when his captors strapped him to a board, wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane and forced water into his throat in a technique that simulates drowning.

The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html

The most effective use of waterboarding, according to current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States.

A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked.

... snip ...

"KSM lasted the longest under waterboarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again," said a former CIA official familiar with KSM's case.

... snip ...

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in.

Here are some more:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_20071112/ai_n21124613/

Water-Boarding Saves American Lives
Human Events ,* Nov 12, 2007 * by Murdock, Deroy

... snip ...

KSM, as intelligence agencies call him, directed the September 11 attacks, which killed 2,978 people and injured at least 7356. "I am the head of the al Qaeda military committee," he told Al Jazeera in April 2002. "And yes, we did it." KSM wired money to his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the February 1993 World Trade Center blast that killed six and wounded 1,040. KSM and Yousef planned Operation Bojinka, a foiled 1995 scheme to explode 12 American jetliners above the Pacific. While some doubt his claim, KSM reportedly said, "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the City of Karachi, Pakistan."

After U.S. and Pakistani authorities captured KSM in March 2003, he stayed mum for months, often answering questions with Koranic chants. Interrogators eventually water-boarded him-for just 90 seconds.

KSM "didn't resist," one CIA veteran said in the August 13 New Yorker. "He sang right away." Another CIA official told ABC: "KSM lasted the longest under water-boarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again."

KSM's revelations helped authorities arrest at least six major terrorists:

* Ohio-based trucker Iyman Faris pleaded guilty May 1, 2003, to providing material support to terrorists. He secured 2,000 sleeping bags for al Qaeda and delivered cash, cell phones and airline tickets to its men. He also conspired to derail a train near Washington, D.C., and use acetylene torches to sever the Brooklyn Bridge's cables, plunging it into the East River.

* Jemaah Islamiya (JI) agent Rusman "Gun Gun" Gunawan was convicted of transferring money to bomb Jakarta's Marriott Hotel, killing 12 and injuring 150.

* Hambali, Gunawan's brother and ring-leader of JI's October 2002 Bali nightclub blasts, killed 202 and wounded 209.

* Suspected al Qaeda agent Majid Khan, officials say, provided money to JI terrorists and plotted to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, detonate U.S. gas stations and poison American water reservoirs.

* Jose Padilla, who trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was convicted last August of providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder people overseas. Padilla, suspected of but not charged with planning a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack, reportedly learned to incinerate residential high-rises by igniting apartments filled with natural gas.

* Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, an American-educated biochemist and JI member, reportedly provided hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi housing in Kuala Lumpur during a January 2000 9/11 planning summit. He also is suspected of employing "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. "The 9/11 Commission Report" (page 151) states: "Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he helped set up near the Kandahar airport."

Imagine how many innocent people these six Islamo-fascists (and perhaps others) would have murdered had interrogators left KSM unwater-boarded and his secrets unuttered.

I say release the reports so we know the truth. Agreed?

By the way, YOU haven't proven that there is a conventional interrogation technique that will elicit information, much less break someone, in a couple hours ... which remains my hypothetical scenario whether you like it or not. IF you have only a couple of hours, and the choice is between inflicting pain and discomfort in hopes of learning something that you believe someone knows that would save hundreds of thousands of lives, would you choose to inflict that pain or throw up your hands and let the hundreds of thousands die?

 

[applecorped]

What has some crap that has never happened to do with the validity of torutring people against who you do not have a valid and airtight case of anything?

The effects are not temporary. Can you not get your petty, viscious mind around that?

And what is it doing to the minds of our soldiers when some dirtbag tels them to take part in torturing people?

Is there any possibility that the maladaptive behavior will spill over into other areas?

Those of us with military experience will hasten to assure you, YOU CAN BET YOUR KUNDINGI IT WILL.

Do try to learn some military science relevant to treatment of prisoners.

Let's prosecute! This is horrible. When the My Lai massacre happened 14 officers were charged and one (Calley) served three and a half years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning for killing 347 to 504 unarmed citizens. But this is far worse!!! Hang 'em!!!! Hang 'em all!!!!!

 

[leftysergeant]

I cite the case of KSM and statements made by his interrogators. He remained defiant after months of conventional interrogation but broke in 90 seconds when waterboarding was begun.

This is supported only by the word of a war criminal.

As I pointed out above, the LA library tower plot was only one of several situations that the Bush administration claimed was defused as a result of waterboarding and the like.

We have only the word of war criminals that the intel was gained as a result of war crimes committed against a foreign national, rather than from an illegally-conducted wiretap in violation of our civil liberties, even when there was a way to make it legal.

Waterboarding fans remind me of twoofers. Too ready to take the word of a criminal as Gospel if it advances their cause, and science and history be damned.

 

[scissorhands]

And if it didn't save a life, would you put his knees back together and apologize? Once you start mutilating someone, you can't exactly unring that bell.
Methinks you'll get jumped on a bit for a comment like that...

In the case of KSM not giving any information?
No I wouldnt repair his knees, I would shoot him.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Further to my previous comments, I should add that there is always the plea of justification.

An ordinary citizen, not necessarily a member of the CIA, on trial for murder, not merely torture, can plead justification for actually killing someone, not merely torturing them, not necessarily a terrorist, even if he did it to save one life, not "billions".

In BAC's hypothetical situation, the person who committed torture could surely plead justification.

And, as I have said, we can imagine hypothetical situations under which any act would be justified. There have, if I remember rightly, been circumstances, during war, in which people have been told: "Have sex with your little daughter or we will kill your whole family", as a method of degrading the enemy. If my memory is correct, that would be a non-hypothetical situation under which incestuous child rape is arguably justified. Yet this does not mean that we should make raping one's daughter legal, it merely means that in such cases we should admit the plea of justification.

 

[MikeSun5]

What is the problem? Are you doubting that the treatment will result in PTSD or are you just admitting that you are flat busted on the professional opinion of one better trained than the torutre advocates here to know what the result of sub-human interrogation tactics can be?

I have yet to see one person who really understands detainee operations advocating for waterboarding.

The problem, leftystrawman, is your crazy generalizations and misattributions of opinions (I'll let the childish insults slide for now). Most on the forums think before they type, while yours usually consist of one sentence contradicting the next.
You are against torture. We get that. From your posts and reactions to others, I've gathered that you believe waterboarding, confinement, confinement with insects, false flag interrogations, and similar extreme interrogation tactics to be "sub-human."
For the like 30th time: Name an effective interrogation tactic that does not involve fear. You have so much experience and knowledge in this matter, this should be easy for you.

 

[leftysergeant]

In the case of KSM not giving any information?
No I wouldnt repair his knees, I would shoot him.

I seriously hope you are not in the military.

(Your kind are one of the reasons that even conservatives want some gun control laws.)