Actually, the fact that the suspect played the police like fish on a line is vitally important to your example. Your example proves nothing because the suspect took advantage of the buddy-buddy treatment and at no time provided an accurate result of the technique's effectiveness.A prime example was that nasty little cockroach who was in Thailand and admitted to killing Jon Benet Ramsey in Colorado (the child beauty pagent girl)
There was complaints about him having a glass of champagne with the police officers on the flight back. Hell if it would make the guy feel at ease with me I would have done the exact same thing. (Granted later on it was proven that his confession was totally bogus, but that is not the point here)
- STAGE2It doesn't injure the person and its incredibly effective.
- IZinterrogatorTorture is ineffective and unreliable. That's the professional opinion of an interrogator with 12 years of experience and not a politician.
Torture is ineffective and unreliable. That's the professional opinion of an interrogator with 12 years of experience and not a politician.
- IZinterrogator
Actually, the fact that the suspect played the police like fish on a line is vitally important to your example. Your example proves nothing because the suspect took advantage of the buddy-buddy treatment and at no time provided an accurate result of the technique's effectiveness.
Your comment is a non sequitur.Yet if he had been water-boarded into a confession it would have stuck!
Yes, but SERE training doesn't count because it exposes you to torture techniques used by our enemies. So by your definition, it is torture since exposure to torture techniques is the only reason it is done in the military.Bruxley said:An interrogation technique rises to torture when it is something you wouldn't do to your own people. So far no rebuttal, acceptable definition?
Then we agree to disagree. But it is torture. It was torture when it was done in WWII by the Japanese, according to the military tribunals held after the war. A soldier was court-martialed during the Vietnam War for doing it, and it was expressly forbidden there. A Texas sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison for doing it in 1983. That's three precedents for you, as decided by the U.S. government.STAGE 2 said:I agree that torture isn't reliable. However your argument assumes that waterboarding is torture. I don't agree.
If that technique is always effective, why do I have 19 approaches to choose from? I should only need one. Oh, wait, not everyone is the same and not everyone breaks on any one approach, that's right. I remember them mentioning that in school once or twice.STAGE 2 said:As far as effective, we already know it works. Thats beyond argument, its simply a fact.
I've done it to myself out of professional curiosity. Plus I am trained to use my judgment as to where the line is and when someone has crossed it. It's torture. Don't believe me? Go throw a towel over your face, lean back so your head is over the tub below your shoulders, pour water on the towel, and continue to breathe normally. Get back to me when you're done with that and if you still believe it isn't torture, rig yourself up like Hitchens was in the video and have some friends do it.STAGE 2 said:Furthermore, and most importantly, most of the people with an "informed" opinion about waterboarding have no personal experience with it, much less witnessed it in real world circumstances.
It would not suprise me to find out that it's use at the SERE course came about as the result of an instructor reading U.S.S. Seawolf by Patrick Robinson and deciding to try it out there for himself. That was the first reference to it I had ever heard of (although it wasn't referred to as waterboarding in the book) and that book came out in 2000.Darren007 said:I went through SERE training when I was enlisted aircrew. There was no waterboarding done to me or anyone as far as I know.
I went through SERE training when I was enlisted aircrew. There was no waterboarding done to me or anyone as far as I know.
It would not suprise me to find out that it's use at the SERE course came about as the result of an instructor reading U.S.S. Seawolf by Patrick Robinson and deciding to try it out there for himself. That was the first reference to it I had ever heard of (although it wasn't referred to as waterboarding in the book) and that book came out in 2000.
Then we agree to disagree. But it is torture. It was torture when it was done in WWII by the Japanese, according to the military tribunals held after the war. A soldier was court-martialed during the Vietnam War for doing it, and it was expressly forbidden there. A Texas sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison for doing it in 1983. That's three precedents for you, as decided by the U.S. government.
If that technique is always effective, why do I have 19 approaches to choose from? I should only need one. Oh, wait, not everyone is the same and not everyone breaks on any one approach, that's right. I remember them mentioning that in school once or twice.
I've done it to myself out of professional curiosity.
Plus I am trained to use my judgment as to where the line is and when someone has crossed it. It's torture. Don't believe me? Go throw a towel over your face, lean back so your head is over the tub below your shoulders, pour water on the towel, and continue to breathe normally.
Get back to me when you're done with that and if you still believe it isn't torture, rig yourself up like Hitchens was in the video and have some friends do it.
If I hold your head underwater until the bubbles stop, it's torture.
Waterboarding is nothing more than forcibly drowning someone without using a body of water to do it in.
I like how the attitude of many is that water boarding is acceptable because we really don't like the people we are doing it to and we believe they are guilty.
No open trials. No review of evidence. We think they are guilty so we can do what we want to them...
So, when the US gov't feels you are guilty of something should they do the same to you until you confess simply to end the abuse?
You cannot profess to stand for the ideals of America only when it suits you. If you have a prisoner entirely within your power you do not behave like a terrorist to get what information you THINK they may have. For those who love to bring up the "where is the nuke" scenario all I can say is that is why they have Presidential Pardons. Extreme solutions for extreme situations.
I can get fast garbage intelligence with waterboarding or I can do my job properly and not let up and get good intelligence. Shouldn't take longer than 48 hours or so.If in fact some people break under some conditions but others do not, that is an argument for keeping waterboarding in our arsenal of interrogation techniques in case we run across folks that don't break under other methods.
But the disenchanted folks over in the Middle East view the people we refer to as terrorists as soldiers defending them against the oppressive Americans. They don't see their armies the way we see ours. So we are torturing their soldiers and torturing captured soldiers is illegal, plus turnabout is fair play. There goes our moral high ground and their opinion of us, which makes them more likely to oppose us.Whether or not this is torture has nothing to do with the standards of conduct between uniformed military personnel. I don't believe that its acceptable to waterboard soldiers of an opposing army, not because its torture, but because I don't believe that POW's should be treated like that. However we are not dealing with members of the military, we are dealing with terrorists. Thats a big difference.
Suffocating because you have water in your nose and mouth cutting off your air supply is the same as drowning. I can pull you out of the pool after two minutes or I can take the towel away. If I don't, you'll die, either way. By your definition, I can hold a guy underwater as long as I want as long as I don't kill him and it isn't torture. No court of law would agree.Tricking the brain into thinking you are drowning doesn't mean you are. If we were just trying to drown them, then all we would have to do is hold them underwater. Thats not what is happening here and for good reason.
So if I turn someone into a babbling idiot who is so psychologically damaged that he spends the rest of his days smearing his feces on the walls of his rubber room, it's not torture? I don't think you would believe so if that person was an American. You'd be calling for me to be drawn and quartered and you would be correct. Just because the terrorists aren't Americans doesn't make it okay to violate their human rights. If we do, where do we stop? If they're European, then we won't do it? We'll spare the Canadians, but everyone else is fair game? Screw it, we'll do it to whoever we want and to hell with world opinion? I think it would only become a matter of time before the government turned these tactics against us on the argument of the necessity of maintaining national security.In the interests of full disclosure, I don't believe that something which does not cause physical injury/pain is torture.