Waterboarding Rocks!

[Cicero]

Cicero is apparently under the impression that there's no torture that does not leave lasting physical effects, so while things like fingernail-ripping and the rack are torture, things like waterboarding and sleep deprivation are not.

He is, of course, dead wrong.

Sleep deprivation is not considered torture as it falls under the Convention Article 16, "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."

 

[Megalodon]

I wonder if Cicero is writing to his congresscritter, demandin an apology and compensation to those japanese soldiers hanged for waterboarding americans in WW2...

 

[Megalodon]

Sleep deprivation is not considered torture as it falls under the Convention Article 16, "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."

Go tell that to the KGB, the STASI, the PIDE or any other of the many organizations that used it to extract information...

 

[A'isha]

Sleep deprivation is not considered torture as it falls under the Convention Article 16, "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."

Oh, my apologies. It's not torture, merely cruel and inhuman, then.

 

[Cicero]

Yeah but those who fell under the bullets were young men.

Really? The average age of a WWII soldier was 26. But the draft was for men 18 to 45. Many senior ranking officers, i.e., even above the age of 50, died in combat in WWII.

 

[Cicero]

I wonder if Cicero is writing to his congresscritter, demandin an apology and compensation to those japanese soldiers hanged for waterboarding americans in WW2...

Wow! This myth has already been debunked in this thread. No Japanese soldiers convicted during the Tokyo Trials were hanged for waterboarding.

 

[Upchurch]

BAC, read about integrity.

Another selection:

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

 

[Praktik]

But then again, were the Japanese justified in their use of torture?

After all, there was the possibility of a sustained invasion of their homeland which could kill hundreds of thousands of lives, heck, not sure what their awareness was of the nuclear bombs but picture this:

Japanese intelligence intercepts a communication about a new kind of bomb, a WMD, that could be dropped on their homeland. This bomb would take many tens of thousands of lives if not more.

They capture some American air servicemen.

Are they justified in using torture to find out about the target and timing of the WMD attack?

Many thousands of lives hang in the balance...

(working assumption: the Japanese believe that torture is a reliable method that extracts reliable information)

 

[A'isha]

Wow! This myth has already been debunked in this thread. No Japanese soldiers convicted during the Tokyo Trials were hanged for waterboarding.

But you are writing to your congressperson demanding that those Japanese soldiers convicted and sentenced to hard labor for waterboarding be compensated and apologized to and the charge of waterboarding be stricken from official records.

Right?

 

[Lonewulf]

But then again, were the Japanese justified in their use of torture?

After all, there was the possibility of a sustained invasion of their homeland which could kill hundreds of thousands of lives, heck, not sure what their awareness was of the nuclear bombs but picture this:

Japanese intelligence intercepts a communication about a new kind of bomb, a WMD, that could be dropped on their homeland. This bomb would take many tens of thousands of lives if not more.

They capture some American air servicemen.

Are they justified in using torture to find out about the target and timing of the WMD attack?

Many thousands of lives hang in the balance...

(working assumption: the Japanese believe that torture is a reliable method that extracts reliable information)

Oh, I cannot wait to see how they're going to dig themselves out of this one.

 

[Cicero]

But you are writing to your congressperson demanding that those Japanese soldiers convicted and sentenced to hard labor for waterboarding be compensated and apologized to and the charge of waterboarding be stricken from official records.

Right?

None of those who used a type of waterboarding used this alone when they interrogated POW's. If you can find a Japanese soldiers who did not simultaneously employ beatings and cigarette burnings on their captives then your scenario might actually have some substance.

 

[A'isha]

None of those who used a type of waterboarding used this alone when they interrogated POW's. If you can find a Japanese soldiers who did not simultaneously employ beatings and cigarette burnings on their captives then your scenario might actually have some substance.

Why was waterboarding listed as a separate, individual charge in the indictments, then? And there's no reason you can't lobby your congressperson to have just that waterboarding charge removed from their convictions while still leaving the others, right?

After all, it must have been some mistake on the part of the Allied prosecutors to have charged the soldiers with a separate count of waterboarding, since waterboarding isn't torture and was only done as part of a concentrated program of torture alongside a number of other torture methods (through some strange method which explains away that apparent contradiction).

 

[Praktik]

None of those who used a type of waterboarding used this alone when they interrogated POW's. If you can find a Japanese soldiers who did not simultaneously employ beatings and cigarette burnings on their captives then your scenario might actually have some substance.

Beatings were employed under the enhanced interrogation program.

To be honest, I'd rather be burned with a cigarette than sleep deprived and put in isolation for years.

The cigarette burning is over and done with quick - the sleep deprivation and isolation last much longer, and can result in psychological problems that last for months or even years after the "treatment" has ended.

 

[Cicero]

But then again, were the Japanese justified in their use of torture?

After all, there was the possibility of a sustained invasion of their homeland which could kill hundreds of thousands of lives, heck, not sure what their awareness was of the nuclear bombs but picture this:

Japanese intelligence intercepts a communication about a new kind of bomb, a WMD, that could be dropped on their homeland. This bomb would take many tens of thousands of lives if not more.

They capture some American air servicemen.

Are they justified in using torture to find out about the target and timing of the WMD attack?

Many thousands of lives hang in the balance...

(working assumption: the Japanese believe that torture is a reliable method that extracts reliable information)

The Japanese were employing torture as their de rigueur treatment of POW's since 1937, eight years before the A-Bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, NM. They also never employed a type of waterboarding without also using methods to inflict grievous bodily punishment on their captives.

 

[A'isha]

The Japanese were employing torture as their de rigueur treatment of POW's since 1937, eight years before the A-Bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, NM. They also never employed a type of waterboarding without also using methods to inflict grievous bodily punishment on their captives.

Strange, then, that they picked the mildly unpleasant technique of waterboarding which, according to you, only causes "temporary discomfort" to perform on the same prisoners that they would beat, burn, and starve. Why do you think that is, Cicero? Wanting to give their victims a little break during their torments?

 

[BeAChooser]

The fact that you just obliterated every possible argument he can make probably has something to do with it.

I'm not going to play his game, David. Or I'll be here all day addressing a dozen hypothetical scenarios from each and every one of those on the other side of this issue. Even the ones afraid to answer my question.

Because unlike them, I would have to think about each case individually and it's implications (because I'm not responding in a purely emotional way like they are).

Now of course there is no moral equivalence between inflicting some pain on one guilty figure and killing two or a dozen people (or even injuring more than one in any serious way). But a thinking person has to draw the line somewhere and I'm far more concerned (as I've expressed in this thread) about what we can do to mitigate the threat from terrorists who want to employ WMDs to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of people (and no, I don't care how DHS defines a WMD).

Now, David, since you've joined this thread, you've obviously decided you want to answer my question too. So here it is. In order to save the lives of a 100,000 innocent people from a terrorist, would you inflict temporary pain and discomfort on one person who probably knows the information to locate and defuse that bomb? And you have only 2 hours before that bomb goes off. Now don't chicken out, David, like so many others.

 

[Praktik]

The Japanese were employing torture as their de rigueur treatment of POW's since 1937, eight years before the A-Bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, NM. They also never employed a type of waterboarding without also using methods to inflict grievous bodily punishment on their captives.

Right, but if they had intelligence about an upcoming WMD attack, would that make the torture used to find out about the specifics of that attack legitimate?

Even if they also used illegitimate torture (something the US has also done: torturing the individual whose story became the basis for the Taxi to the Dark Side doc as but one example), would it be legitimate in that one specific case to prevent a WMD attack?

 

[BeAChooser]

I'm curious about something. If waterboarding really isn't all that bad, as Cicero keeps insisting, why is it so important that we use it? Especially that we use it when lives are on the line and we need information right away!

You really are desperate to defend your views on moral equivalency. And you haven't been listening because that question has been answered.

 

[Cicero]

Beatings were employed under the enhanced interrogation program.

To be honest, I'd rather be burned with a cigarette than sleep deprived and put in isolation for years.

The cigarette burning is over and done with quick - the sleep deprivation and isolation last much longer, and can result in psychological problems that last for months or even years after the "treatment" has ended.

And yet the Convention does not consider sleep deprivation torture. Manson has been kept in isolation 23 hours a day many times during the last 35+ years of his incarceration. Are you going to write your Congressman to stop the Corcoran Prison from subjecting Manson to isolation because it can result in psychological problems?

 

[Praktik]

In order to save the lives of a 100,000 innocent people from a terrorist, would you inflict temporary pain and discomfort on one person who probably knows the information to locate and defuse that bomb? And you have only 2 hours before that bomb goes off. Now don't chicken out, David, like so many others.

I've seen people on "my side" here answer this hypothetical in one of two ways, neither of which I would characterize as "chickening out":

#1: They would do it, and then put themselves at the mercy of the law.

#2: They still wouldn't do it.

Maybe you don't like these answers, and thus cast them in an unfavourable light as a result. To me they are both legitimate.

One thing I think we've all said though: you can't make policy based on an unlikely outlier. See, we're thinking about the big picture: what kind of policy should the US pursue? Should we make a general rule heavily weighted towards the most unlikely of scenariors (ie, torture is legalized)? Or should our general rule be that torture is always illegal, leaving individuals who tortured in your scenario to the mercy of the law - which might very well be lenient if in fact your fantasy ever came to pass?