This is not the America I believe inFollow

for as long as the UN has existed,

I thought we all agreed that the UN was a waste of space?

some people defined waterboarding as torture after the fact and want to retroactively go after the US for its use.

Tho' waterboarding wasn't exactly big news before you guys starting justifying its use, its use throughout the centuries by torturers is well documented. The Inquisition used liked to use it because it left no marks and drew no blood. The Dutch used it. It was widespread in SE asia in the 60's and 70's and africans have loved it for ages. Pretending it isn't torture is the recent phenomenon.

Where were all these people pushing to ban waterboarding prior to 2002?

The US itself has prosecuted people for waterboarding their soldiers. The europeans banned it in the 18th Century (probably carried on using it tho). Changing its name from 'Water Torture', to 'Waterboarding' seems to have fooled a lot of people into thinking that its not torture. Of course, most of those people (like yourself) are the ones who don't want to believe that your Govt. torures its prisoners.

You don't care about waterboarding, and neither do 99% of those who make a big deal about it.

Actually I find it abhorrent. And if you are wrong about me, my bet is you're wrong about all those others too.

You care about opposing the US in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

True that.

and you adopt the position on waterboarding as a convenient means of doing so.

Its one of the things that illustrates to me that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were and are without merit, and were/are the wrong aproach to the problems that the two countries presented.

Then why didn't "we" do anything to ban the use of waterboarding beforehand? Why did "we" allow other nations to use it for the entire time period the UN has existed without comment, and without action, and certainly without outrage?

You never heard of Amnesty International? Or HRW? Just because you were ignorant of efforts to stop the use of torture around the world, doesn't mean it didn't happen. I think the proper question is, 'Why didnt Americans get upset about torture until they needed a reason to justify invading Iraq?'.

You aren't acting on any high moral ground here, so how about you stop pretending you are?

The US in particular, and many other countries, use the 'moral highground' as justification to operate in the ways that they do. All I'm doing is pointing out the hypocrisy of using that 'highground' when in fact those countries are wallowing in the same crime, corruption and filth, that they accuse 'them' (the scary other 'them') of wallowing in, and people like you fail to see it. Not only fail to see it, but adamantly refuse to see it. Which is why you bend over backwards to justify your particular Govts. use of things like water torture boarding, when its blatently fUcking obvious to anyone with an ounce of cognitive ability that torture is torture is torture. Whether your pulling someones fingernails out, poking red hot coat hangars up someones ****, or causing them to believe they are going to drown, it all has the same effect. The victim wants it to stop, and they will say any damn thing they think you want to get you to stop. John McCain said that waterboarding was no different to holding a gun to someones head and firing a blank. He'd know.

You on the other hand, don't know, and don't want to know, because as I said, it would open up a can of worms in your head as to why you so wholeheartedly and unquestioningly support the actions of your Govt.

What's fun is that Canadians are under the delusion that we'd let them stay independent if we thought we needed them not to be.

I have too much faith in the known quantity of human nature to believe we will ever be civilized enough to make war unnecessary. As long as their are cultures that haven't joined the "civilized" world and the have the ability to export their agenda and their vitriol, it will be necessary to use the only response they understand to make "civilization" a safer place to live.

And I've pointed out before that your expectations of government, and its imperatives, does nothing to free the individual. Rather it ensures that all are dragged down to the same level. Excellence and achievement become unrealized dreams, unfulfilled wishes, all so that the least capable among us should not be made to go without the benefits of hard work.

When gbaji complains that other people "play with the definition of a word" to "create a semantic argument" we're pretty much gone here. How many more pages can this months-old thread go?

Sure. But in this case, it's the organization to which we've signed agreements and which could arguably be said to be the only basis upon which one might press a charge of "illegal war acts". And since it has this conveniently created "convention on torture and other bad stuff stuff" and even has a committee of representatives who sit down and define what acts constitute torture and which don't, then that would seem to be a valid starting point (and really the *only* legal starting point) from which to make any sort of determination as to the legality of the use of various interrogation techniques by the US.

Wouldn't you agree? I mean, it's pretty easy for you to jump up and down and declare something to be torture and declare that to be illegal and declare that the US government did something wrong, but that is just your opinion. Unless there's some objective and agreed-upon standard to use, then your claims are completely worthless.




No. Pretending it isn't torture has been the standard practice by the member body of the UN charged specifically with determining what is and what isn't torture. I'm not sure how I can be any more clear about this. The UN committee on torture has been presented with the use of waterboarding dozens of times over many decades and has never, not once *ever* decided to list waterboarding as a torture technique and include it on the banned list.


What has changed only is that the US used it. That's when you and everyone else suddenly cared. I'm sorry, I find that less than truthful on your part. If you really cared, you'd have cared before 2002. But you didn't. And the UN didn't. Thus, cries of "illegal" would seem to be more than a bit dishonest.




Because the people waterboarded were soldiers and thus any interrogation, not just waterboarding, was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. That the interrogation went beyond just asking questions likely determined which of those violations were charged, but the larger point was that had the Japanese been waterboarding civilian spies or saboteurs (which they presumably did do), we would not (and as far as I know did not) charge them with anything.



When you can show me an international treaty which the US is a signatory to which specifically and broadly outlaws waterboarding as an interrogation technique, then you'll have a point. We're talking about legality here. I have stated many times that I'm not a big fan of harsh interrogation techniques. I don't think anyone is. But in this case, we're talking about what is legal. The relevant treaties are the UN and Geneva Conventions. The UN defines what torture is and very specifically had not done so with regard to waterboarding prior to its use by the US.


So, while not "nice", it was "legal".



And yet, if the US had never used it you wouldn't be talking about it. In fact, I'd wager good money that if it were only a commonly used technique among terrorists and insurgents fighting *against* the US, you'd be silent about its use as well. I mean, I've never heard you condemn things like chopping people's heads off and sending videos of it to your enemies nearly as much as I've heard you condemn a few uses of waterboarding by the US.

You hate the US. You love terrorists. Admit it! ;)




And I'm sure you were actively speaking in support of those groups and actively speaking out against waterboarding prior to 2002, right? Somehow I doubt that.

I'll also point out that you carefully chose your words. You said these groups work to "stop the use of torture around the world", but didn't mention waterboarding specifically. And while I'm sure they included it in the list of things they didn't like, isn't it amazing that no media attention was paid to waterboarding until the US used it a few times. Shocking!

No, wait. It's not really. It's the cart leading the horse just like always.



It's so obvious that the official international body chartered to make such determinations failed to do so for 50+ years. Um... Apparently, it's not quite that obvious, is it?



Two out of those three cause actual physical harm to the subject. One of them doesn't. Want to guess which one isn't like the others?



Yes. And if only we could come up with a way to get people to talk that *didn't* cause them physical harm. Wouldn't that be so much better than pulling out fingernails and sticking hot pokers into their orifices?



Yup. And guess what? That's not necessarily torture either. So while I"m sure McCain would know that the two are the same, he'd also know that this is entirely different than the actual torture he suffered while held as a prisoner.



I don't unquestioningly support the actions of my government. I just don't blindly follow the most absurd charges and assume they must be true out of some hatred for said government. In the grand scheme of things, the use of waterboarding on a handful of occasions by trained interrogators on carefully legally defined prisoners does not concern me anywhere near as much as dozens of other things.

It's not about questioning, it's about importance. OMG! Our government captured some really bad guys, who were not US citizens, and who were not "soldiers" under the GC, but who were illegally taking part in attacks against us, and lawfully interrogated them and during said interrogation used a technique which didn't kill them, didn't physically harm them, but is fairly effective at getting them to talk. Um... Gee. In the context of all the other stuff going on in the world, I'm just not going to lose sleep over that.

It's just not that important. I am 100 times more worried about the rise of an entitlement mentality by our citizens than I am about a waterboarding of Gitmo detainees. I'm more concerned about the massive overspending by our government on social programs which we don't need or want. I am more concerned about the lack of any sort of rational policy towards border security and immigration. I am honestly more concerned about the social impact of banning toys in happy meals than I am about said incidents of waterboarding.


Does that put it in context for you?

Who's playing "excluded middle" here Joph? I either must join in GOP bashing, or I'm a mindless follower of whatever they want? Lol...

I don't do so "blindly" though. Every single position the GOP takes which I agree with, I can present a step by step logical reason *why* I agree with said position. That's not "blind" by any stretch of the imagination. You're free to disagree with my reasoning or my conclusions, but don't just insist that I'm blindly supporting one side.

I don't know the answers to the questions the conservative posters have raised.

However, I trust the British more then anonymous forum posters.

When they say:

1. They define waterboarding as torture, well I take their word for legal advise.

2. It did not yield useful intel, well they have that inside knowledge.

3. It did yield false intel, just to stop the torture - again, they have that inside info.

As for Moe's comment about psychological interrogation: I have no issues with the army field manual. There were well established techniques in place which were effective. They got all the useful info (again, according to the British).