Waterboarding Rocks!

[Texas]

What Obama and the Coalition are doing right now.

Baloney, there was never a "coalition" in Afghanistan beyond the same ones that we had in Iraq. Yes NATO should have taken up the slack BUT just as in Kosovo NATO held our coats while we do the fighting.

 

[SezMe]

How is torture inhumane if one's life is never endangered? Isn't that humane?

The definition of torture has been cited previously in this thread; the endangerment of life is NOT one of the criteria.

 

[Texas]

Really? How many of the Gitmo prisoners have been let go with no charges? Hint: Feel free to express the number in hundreds.

Yes we sent them to countries that promised to put them in prison and then they promptly released them back int the fight.

 

[Dr Adequate]

No the point was to get him to talk about other activities he had planned and to give up the names of others involved in 911. He did that.

And that's how we know that Osama Bin Laden was involved. Up until then, we'd all been blaming the Freemasons.

 

[Texas]

The definition of torture has been cited previously in this thread; the endangerment of life is NOT one of the criteria.

The definition of torture has lost all meaning. The memos relied on the caveat the US applied to the CAT treaty that stated that torture must cause severe pain and long term injury OR long term mental damage. None of the 3 endured any aspect of those conditions.

 

[Upchurch]

But you are and always will be.

Well, we don't have to act like it.

 

[Pardalis]

Baloney, there was never a "coalition" in Afghanistan beyond the same ones that we had in Iraq. Yes NATO should have taken up the slack BUT just as in Kosovo NATO held our coats while we do the fighting.

Boy, since Obama's election the world has turned around topsy-turvy, instead of arguing against leftist kooks who whined that we have no right to be in Afghanistan, here I am arguing against right wing ones who pretend we're not even there.

 

[Texas]

And that's how we know that Osama Bin Laden was involved. Up until then, we'd all been blaming the Freemasons.

Oh get real.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Oh get real.

The brilliance of your wit is matched only by the profundity of your argument.

 

[Texas]

The brilliance of your wit is matched only by the profundity of your argument.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993446103128041.html

The terrorist Abu Zubaydah (sometimes derided as a low-level operative of questionable reliability, but who was in fact close to KSM and other senior al Qaeda leaders) disclosed some information voluntarily. But he was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11, who in turn disclosed information which -- when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydah -- helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists, and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the U.S. Details of these successes, and the methods used to obtain them, were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning in September 2006. Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense.

 

[Texas]

Boy, since Obama's election the world has turned around topsy-turvy, instead of arguing against leftist kooks who whined that we have no right to be in Afghanistan, here I am arguing against right wing ones who pretend we're not even there.

Who is not there? Yes Canada is there and has paid in blood. In Obama's grovel tour he asked NATO to provide more troops, he got a grand total of 3000 non-combat troops but only as far as the up coming election.

 

[SezMe]

Yes we sent them to countries that promised to put them in prison and then they promptly released them back int the fight.

Evasion noted.

Moving on, how often did this happen?

 

[Praktik]

The definition of torture has lost all meaning. The memos relied on the caveat the US applied to the CAT treaty that stated that torture must cause severe pain and long term injury OR long term mental damage. None of the 3 endured any aspect of those conditions.

I don't mean to condescend, but I can only conclude you haven't bothered reading sources other than pro-torture commentators (you know, like the ICRC report, the memos themselves, analyses in papers you disagree with). Here, from the ICRC report, regarding Zubaydah:

I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress.​

More from the Danner article on the ICRC:

Crawford, who had been appointed by the Bush administration to decide which Guantánamo detainees should be tried before military commissions, declined to refer to trial Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was to have been among the September 11 hijackers but who had been turned back by immigration officials at Orlando International Airport. After he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2002, Qahtani was imprisoned in Guantánamo and interrogated by Department of Defense intelligence officers. Crawford, a retired judge and former general counsel of the army, told TheWashington Post that she had concluded that Qahtani's "treatment met the legal definition of torture."

The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent....

You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive.[14]​

Qahtani's interrogation at Guantánamo, accounts of which have appeared in Time and The Washington Post, was intense and prolonged, stretching for fifty consecutive days beginning in the late fall of 2002, and led to his hospitalization on at least two occasions​

And here's what happened to Padilla:

One of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said that Mr. Padilla was a “completely docile” prisoner. “There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, Padillachained not one act of disobedience,” said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami federal public defender’s office. In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, “I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’ ...

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”

“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,” Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.​

Qahtani:

At the end of months of sleep deprivation and other forms of torture, Qahtani, according to an FBI letter, "was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end)."​

Here's an account from Gitmo:

Last December, documents obtained by the A.C.L.U. also cited an F.B.I. agent at Guantánamo Bay who observed that ''on a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.'' In one case, he added, ''the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.''​

Look, I understand you support the torture policy and believe that it serves the interest of America. You shouldn't feel the need to pretend that what you're supporting isn't torture however.

The empirical evidence is here. Beyond the detainee deaths, the hospitalizations, there's hard proof that the detainees suffered long-term psychological issues.

Remember the definition: "severe mental or physical pain or suffering".

Do you claim - having read the accounts I've listed above - that the cumulative effect of all torture methods employed does not at least rise to the level of "severe mental pain or suffering"?

If so, by what authority? Please cite what you can.

 

[Dr Adequate]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993446103128041.html

Better. How was he coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh?

 

[BeAChooser]

I'd already answered that same point, such as it was, in post #625. He did not write a single word in reply or rebuttal to my post, and then dragged out the same crappy argument all over again in post #903.

I wonder why he ignored post #625. Was it because he "fears what it shows"?

You are either think you can get away with a baldfaced lie (and I don't think that's above you) or you are a completely unobservant fool who is intent on embarrassing himself. Below is my post #711 in it's entirety. As all can see, I did infact respond to your post #625, point by point, directly and to you. I did not ignore the content of your post at all, as you did mine. And if there were any insults in it, I showed why they were deserved. I think this proves once and for all to everyone on this forum why you deserve to be in that basket with lefty, DA. And off you go.

********************

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
I can form many hypotheses.

In light of my last point, I will temporarily take DA out of the ignore basket and address a post by him which did in fact offer a response to my question about why Obama would hesitate to disclose the reports and details if waterboarding didn't work and thus embarrass the Bush administration and folks that then must have lied to the American public about it's effectiveness.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
One is that he is, quite properly, seeking legal advice on what can and cannot be released.

A President can declassify anything. And isn't this whole thread about whether it's smart to follow Whitehouse legal advice?

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
One is that there are national security issues. Even if the waterboarding elicited no new information not already acquired by other techniques, it might have elicited the same information again. How else would one prove the inefficacy of waterboarding, except to say stuff along the lines of: "We tortured such-and-such a terrorist, who told us such-and-such a thing, which we already knew because such-and-such an informant had already told us"? Which reveals what we learned, which, as you point out, we might wish to keep secret. At the very least the documents would all have to be vetted for security implications.

I'm sure (at least I hope but you never really know where democrats are concerned) they would be if there are things that are still vital to keep secret. But still, there are a number of terrorist plots the government publically claimed we learned about and prevented via waterboarding when nothing else worked (and yes I already know that the LA Tower claim doesn't seem reasonable given the dates). Our enemies already know that we know about these cases. So in these cases, I again can see no reason that Obama could not release the full details of how and when that information was gleaned and whether conventional interrogation yielded that information or waterboarding ... and whether that information saved lives. And how much time elapsed between learning that information and when the terrorist event was slated to happen. That alone would tell us which group of witnesses (the FBI agents or the CIA agents) (Obama's minions or Bush minions) has lied to the American public. So we know which group to punish.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
Another, related to that, is the precedent it can set: if the results of waterboarding can be revealed, then why not those of other interrogations?

A precedent is only precedent if you make it a precedent.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
One is that he wants to retain good relations with the CIA.

Ahhhh ... so you are admitting the possibility that Obama is willing to look the other way when laws are broken or the CIA lies to the American public. That sounds to me like he hopes to use the CIA in the future ... and we've all seen how the last democrat administration used government agencies like the DOJ, FBI and IRS. Perhaps this knowledge of CIA wrong doing can be leverage to make them do something for democrats down the road. Like spy on one of their political opponents.

Sorry, but I thought Obama and his followers promised us *change* and a new, more lawful direction. One with ethics. One that wouldn't tolerate the government lying to the American people. I thought democrats were upset about Bush lying to the public. Yet here appears to be one democrat (DA) who would be willing to accept Obama lying ... just to have good relations with the people who ... spy on people and who terminate people with prejudice.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
He has already announced, rightly in my opinion, that he will not prosecute any government agent for acting on good faith on advice provided by the justice department.

But we aren't talking about acting in "good faith" here. We are talking about one side or the other DELIBERATELY LYING to the American public about the efficacy of interrogation methods.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
Well, Bush is gone, but he has to live with the CIA.

A corrupt CIA?

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
And one is that he might conceive that releasing the information would embarrass America by showing up the savagery of the methods that its agents employed.

ROTFLOL! I don't think based on what we've seen so far that Obama has any hesitation in embarrassing America. I hear he's even going to release pictures of the torture to help do that.

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate
Perhaps he puts his country above the prospect of embarrassing Bush

Obviously not and obviously the rest of the democrat leadership doesn't either. Mr Adequate is really in denial about the character of democrats. And pretty desperate to fine any excuse for Obama not being the man he promised to be.

**********

 

[BeAChooser]

Quite right, Dr. A.

Actually, he was utterly and completely wrong, Pardalis. As I just proved in my post #1055 above.

 

[BeAChooser]

Could we agree that I probably could come up with scenarios that are plausible?

No, we can't agree on that. If you could come up with a plausible scenario, you would have used one from REALITY already.

I suggest you look at my posts #903 and #937. I think the truth, that you are squirming around to avoid admitting, is that you would let lots of people that were saved in the REALITY that is described in those posts as a result of waterboarding all die. You would have let them die rather than subject just a few very evil men to some temporary pain and discomfort. I suspect the truth is that you believe in moral equivalence but you don't have the guts to admit it because you full well know how foolish and naive that makes you look to the average American ... the 71% of Americans who in polls say we should torture (and they aren't just talking about waterboarding) to save lives.

That you need to INVENT scenarios, or modify existing ones to the point of absurdity, in order to prove your point, shows just how warped you are.

No sir, invented or not, the simple yes or no answer to the question I asked, which you hide from via your tortured rationalizations, is a window into to how warped YOU may be. You can't bring yourself to simply say "yes, if push came to shove, I would inflict some temporary pain and discomfort to save a thousand lives". You thus demonstrate clearly to all that you believe inflicting some TEMPORARY PAIN AND DISCOMFORT on ONE person is worse than knowingly letting a thousand people die. Now THAT is WARPED.

And beside, as I said, irregardless of plausibility, are you willing to hurt one person to save the lives of thousands or even hundreds of thousands? Yes or no?

I already answered that. If I had to commit some atrocity in order to save the entire universe, sure, I'd do it.

No, that's not the question you answered. You answered a question of your own making ... one that was exceedingly silly in order to avoid answering the question I asked. Now having proven with a real life scenario (see posts #903 and #937) that plots involving the mass murder of people with potentially little time to stop them can indeed exist, I'd like a direct answer to my question so there is no doubt where you stand. Let me pose it to you again as a completely plausible scenario (one that mimics the real life situation I noted in post #937), so there will no excuse on your part:

If you had in your custody a person who had previously killed thousands of Americans in a plot of horrendous proportions, who was high up in an organization that very likely had other plots under way that might kill thousands more Americans ... plots that might be nearing completion because the person was boasting that "soon" you would see the results of them, and this person had resisted all conventional interrogation attempts for months to get him to reveal the nature of those plots and who was involved in them, would you waterboard him? Would you subject him to a little temporary pain and discomfort in the hopes of saving an unknown but possibly quite large number of people? Or would you just let those plots come to fruition, knowing full well they could very likely kill many more Americans and do untold amounts of damage?

Now don't hide this time.

But what you are conveniently omitting is that in the real world, these people aren't in captivity hours away from their attacks with torture as the only resort to prevent them

False. That's exactly the situation that confronted the interrogators in the real life description I presented in posts #903 and described again in post #973.

in the real world, waterboarding and torture are not very effective in obtaining this information anyway

FALSE. The facts in post #903 prove that waterboarding was effective.

in the real world, interrogation experts disagree with you

The ones in post #903 certainly agree with me. And the facts I presented in that post suggests your couple of FBI agents and your liberal mainstream media have distorted what actually occurred and what was learned from waterboarding. I'm willing to let Obama prove me wrong. So why doesn't he, since he alone holds the power to do so? He has a moral, ethical and legal responsibility to resolve this issue by releasing whatever information is needed to decide which side in his debate has been dishonest and needs to be punished. So why is he letting partisanship, emotion and apparent lies by some on your side of this debate rule the day? Could Obama be afraid that the truth will prove his policy is a huge blunder ... that once again he shows himself to be stuck on stupid and naive where national defense and foreign policy matters are concerned?

If the evidence demonstrated that the torture of terrorists really worked and did help save lives, I would probably support its use.

I did present such evidence ... in post #903 (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4661196&postcount=903 ) ... and you just ignored it. So call me skeptical.

Quote:
And I bet you are a liberal.

You are a grotesque caricature.

I notice you didn't deny it.

Therefore, it is not just moral, but also practical to outlaw torture as an interrogation technique.

Well maybe the definition of torture is too broad. There is a great deal of dishonesty by those on your side of this issue. First you bandie the word torture around knowing full well what image it conjures (flayed skin, pulled teeth, electricity cooking genitals) in the minds of most people. You do this knowing full well that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were approved for use by the CIA, like waterboarding, are nothing like that. You never mention that strict guidelines were established on employing the enhanced techniques. That only THREE people ... three VERY BAD PEOPLE ... were ever waterboarded. You never mention that they were specifically waterboarded because they had resisted conventional techniques, it was thought they knew information about other serious ongoing plots, and that learning about those plots was time urgent. You hide these facts from people. And you lie about the effectiveness of waterboarding and how quickly it broke those BAD BAD PEOPLE. Sorry, but you don't hold the moral high ground here, Morrigan. You are willing to let thousands die who could be saved. And that's the ugly, scary secret behind your side of this debate. Which the answer to my simple hypothetical question has exposed.

 

[BeAChooser]

I'm not lying, that's what has been reported in the news.

No, that is not what was reported in the news. The agents involved said that the three al-Qaeda broke after only a few minutes of waterboarding, the very first time they were waterboarded. And began providing actionable information from that point on ... information that turned out to be accurate and which eventually led to arrest of many others, the stopping of many ongoing plots and the saving of many lives. Now of course that first waterboarding didn't end all resistance on the part of these terrorists. I'm sure there there additional things they still didn't want to reveal to interrogators if they could avoid it. So when asked about those things they resisted and were waterboarded again, and then gave up those details. And that cycle continued until interrogators were fairly sure they'd sucked the well dry. So I stand by my assessment of you. You distorted the published facts. Or if you didn't you revealed that your sources are more than a little questionable.

 

[BeAChooser]

Once you start permitting it one time, you start permitting it five times, and a hundred times after that, and I don't want to go down that road. It's just not right.

Even if it means thousands of people die as a result of not doing it? How can that be "right"? Like I said, you folks seem to think it is worse to inflict temporary pain and discomfort on 3 VERY BAD PEOPLE than to knowing stand by and let thousands of people die that you could have saved by doing so.

 

[BeAChooser]

. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."

Thank you. Good information. Which makes the lack of moral clarity on the part of many on this thread and on the part of the Obama administration itself even more starkly clear.