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Waterboarding Rocks!

Cicero said:
Does torture include the removal of body parts by American soldiers/marines while the enemy is still alive?

"[c]learly, the collection of body parts on a scale large enough to concern the military authorities had started as soon as the first living or dead Japanese bodies were encountered."
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If they are living when the parts are removed, yes, the prisoners were tortured. If the skulls were removed from livng Japanese in custody, it was murder.

And doing either was specificly addressed by an order that emphasized that is was a crime to begin with.
 
Lonewulf said:
Does it disturb anyone else that, in a rush to prove that we should be able to be evil bastards today, people are rushing to prove that we were evil bastards in other wars?

It's essentially saying, "We can go ahead and act like whatever we want, because we did it before, so it can't possibly be wrong".
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Yes. I never did get that argumentative approach.

As I've said before, we should really aspire to do even better than Nuremberg by now. It's almost as if some folks here are arguing that the standard of justice and equal application of the law then was as good as it can ever be, and it's OK to be equal or even worse than that nowadays.
 
We've heard a lot about the 24 scenario used to justify waterboarding.

Now what about this set-up? Let's say someone -- oh, I don't know, the Vice-President of the United States -- had a notion that Saddam Hussein participated in the 9/11 attacks. And this person wants to use any evidence of this link he can find to justify invading Iraq.

So what if this person were to recommend waterboarding or otherwise torturing people who might be able to confirm a Saddam connection to the attacks? Pay attention -- this is not a imminent threat, because the 9/11 attacks have already happened. This is not trying to determine the exact details of any suspected plot planned by Saddam, as in the 24 scenario. This is senior officials of the Bush Adminstration using torture to extract confession of Saddam's involvement in the 9/11 attacks to quell political arguments against invading Iraq.

Is there anyone willing to defend this use of waterboarding?
 
SezMe said:
BAC, have another read about integrity.

ETA: Good reading for you as well, Cicero.
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Having trouble with your reading comprehension again? Read the ENTIRE post - after all it consists of a total of four, count, 'em, four words. It suggests that BAC take some action. It was not offered as evidence of anything.
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Then why did you substitute the word "integrity" for the link to The Washington Post Fort Hunt article in your original reference to this?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.p...25#post4657525

And then you asked for comment on the article:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.p...49#post4659549

So your editorializing of the link was not provided as evidence to support your position? You sure were eager to insure a response to this article. Now that the article has been fleshed out, do you still regard it as the Holy Grail of benign American interrogation methods of POW's during WWII?

I'm not sure what the 2006 Fort Hunt article represents as far as WWII interrogations, never mind what their significance is to the CIA interrogations at GITMO. Henry Kolm, the now 93 year-old former interrogator at Fort Hunt, was questioning Rudolph Hess when his country had already unconditionally surrendered.

Ret. Maj. Arnold Kohn's remembrances of his time at Fort Hunt ( the recollections not deemed important for The Washington Post to include in their article) are not so benign as Mr. Kolm's.

This article was not about the goings-on at Fort Hunt during WWII as much as it was about providing these three or four guys a political platform to rail against the three detainees waterboarded by the CIA.
 
Upchurch said:
Psst, that's not the Fort Hunt article.
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Then SezMe really should refrain from using the identical editorializing of a link. That is the same characterization SezMe used for the Fort Hunt article. And when you ask SezMe what is this article is evidence of, the reply is that isn't evidence of anything.
 
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Upchurch said:
That's because both articles are about people who have integrity. A single word may be descriptive of a number of different incidents. Surprising, I know.
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No. The Fort Hunt article is about one man with a recollection that isn't even germaine to the subject of interrogation, and another man who thinks threatening torture is a practical joke.

The former USAF interrogator has nothing to do with the CIA interrogation of the 3 waterboarded detainees. If I link an article about waterbaording to Speaker of the House Pelosi with the "integrity" editorializing for a link, does that mean she has any?
 
Cicero said:
The former USAF interrogator has nothing to do with the CIA interrogation of the 3 waterboarded detainees.
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:confused:

It has to do with the subject of torturing and why we shouldn't do it. How does that have nothing to do with the US torturing three detainees?
 
Upchurch said:
:confused:

It has to do with the subject of torturing and why we shouldn't do it. How does that have nothing to do with the US torturing three detainees?
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The CIA did it to three detainees and now the POTUS and his AG said they will never do it again. Matthew Alexander was in the USAF. He couldn't use the enhanced technique. FBI interrogator Soufan's experiences with Fahd al Quso and Abu Jandal make for fascinating reading. But he couldn't use the technique either. These two guys are proof that waterboarding was not the order of the day after 9/11. After these interrogators felt the need to unburden themselves, we are still left with the 3 detainees that were waterboarded by the CIA interrogators. We already know this.
 
Cicero said:
The CIA did it to three detainees and now the POTUS and his AG said they will never do it again. Matthew Alexander was in the USAF. He couldn't use the enhanced technique.
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The CIA couldn't use torture either, yet they did.


Cicero said:
we are still left with the 3 detainees that were waterboarded by the CIA interrogators. We already know this.
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The question remains: Should the CIA have used torture?

What do you think, Cicero?
 
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