Is waterboarding torture?

Is water boarding torture and do you condone its use?

  • Yes, water boarding is torture and I condone its use.

    Votes: 36 25.7%

  • No, water boarding isnt torture and I condone its use.

    Votes: 33 23.6%

  • Yes, water boarding is torture and I do not condone its use.

    Votes: 68 48.6%

  • No water boarding isnt torture and I do not condone its use.

    Votes: 3 2.1%
  • Total voters
    140
So are they the only who have commited attrocities? Do we forget the crusades, was that not in the name of religion? Have you forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two nuclear attacks ever commited, were done by the United States on civilian populations. Oh, but it was ok that we did that because Japan had a Cottage Industry and we were attacking that... right.
If we allow torture on prisoners, then all we are doing is pouring more gasoline on the fire that boils the blood of these people. Kill and enemy combatant and one or two of his family members might take up arms. Torture him, and I guarantee you double, triple, or quadruple the ammount of people joining the ranks. Is it so hard to imagine yourself on the receiving end of that?
 
So are they the only who have commited attrocities? Do we forget the crusades, was that not in the name of religion?
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Not that its relevant to this discussion, but the crusades were a response to nearly 300 years of muslim encroachment into southern europe.


Have you forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two nuclear attacks ever commited, were done by the United States on civilian populations. Oh, but it was ok that we did that because Japan had a Cottage Industry and we were attacking that... right.
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Well, once again if you look at history rather than spew talking points, you would see that we gave japan several chances to surrender and even informed them of the destruction they would face if they didn't.... not that this is relevant either.


If we allow torture on prisoners, then all we are doing is pouring more gasoline on the fire that boils the blood of these people.
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So then explain to me why these people were killing us, chopping off heads and flying planes into buildings BEFORE we ever waterboarded a single person. Clearly waterboarding didn't start this problem. Clearly, there isn't anything worse that these people can do that hasn't been done already. As such, your claim that waterboarding will make things worse just isn't supported by the facts.

Kill and enemy combatant and one or two of his family members might take up arms. Torture him, and I guarantee you double, triple, or quadruple the ammount of people joining the ranks. Is it so hard to imagine yourself on the receiving end of that?
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Yes because thats simply not the case. What you don't seem to get is that these people ALREADY tell the masses we do evil and horrible things. Simply put, they lie. I've no doubt that they tell potential recruits that we rape muslim women and piss on the koran or anything else that would jack up the troops.

Thus, the question isn't whether we should waterboard because it might piss people off, but simply whether we should waterboard. If anything, who we are dealing with should give us incentive enough to waterboard since they are going to say we do it no matter whether we do or not.
 
To those of you who think that US citizens have protection against this sort of thing, read this.

The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants.

So if US citizens can be detained as enemy combatants, can they also be questioned and waterboarded like enemy combatants?
 
The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants.

So if US citizens can be detained as enemy combatants, can they also be questioned and waterboarded like enemy combatants?
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And? I don't recall a constitutional right to not to be detained or not to be classified as an enemy combatant. A US citizen may very well be an enemy combatant. The kid caught in afghanistan was and Padilla was as well. That said, they still have their constitutional rights which would of course protect them from interrogation methods such as waterboarding.
 
Isn't the right to a speedy trial also a constitutional right?

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
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Not any more.
 
Isn't the right to a speedy trial also a constitutional right?
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Yes it is. And SCOTUS already addressed this with Padilla. Habeas is alive and well regardless of what the ACLU is saying.

Of course, if this round about way is how you are trying to make a point about waterboarding then that should tell you something right there. If we are to judge things by their potential for abuse then police shouldn't have guns. Many people have been wrongly shot by police over the years. The potential for abuse is easily provable. The harm is irreversable. However I don't see people clamoring for cops to hand in their guns. Not very consistent if you ask me.
 
...and just looking at the poll above, the folks who oppose waterboarding are tied with those who support it. Hardly the 'consensus' some were alleging.
 
...and just looking at the poll above, the folks who oppose waterboarding are tied with those who support it. Hardly the 'consensus' some were alleging.
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Don't you think people posting a gun forum are more likely to take a conservative, hard core approach to fighting terrorism than the general population?

I would expect members here to be more likely to support waterboarding than, say the members of the Cosmo Forum.
 
Don't you think people posting a gun forum are more likely to take a conservative, hard core approach to fighting terrorism than the general population?

I would expect members here to be more likely to support waterboarding than, say the members of the Cosmo Forum.
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Maybe, but that irrelevant as far as the point I was trying to mak, or rather refute. A 50/50 split is anything but a consensus.
 
Maybe, but that irrelevant as far as the point I was trying to mak, or rather refute.
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Thats funny. You cite a statistic taken from an informal poll on a right-leaning firearms forum, then concede it is probably invalid, and then say the invalidity is irrelevant.

You must work for the Bush Administration.
 
You cite a statistic taken from an informal poll on a right-leaning firearms forum, then concede it is probably invalid, and then say the invalidity is irrelevant.
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I didn't concede anything. I said it may be the possibility that this forum may be more likely to support waterboarding than the general public. However it may not. Nowhere did I say it was invalid.
 
Folks who support torture assume that the person under torture is in fact a "bad guy". The law enforcement community and the intelligence community are often very wrong in identifying bad guys. Unlike fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes, who can deduce whom the killer is, modern cops and spooks rely heavily on traitors and confessions as their most reliable information. I would think in an era when 13 people on death row in Illinois were shown to be innocent, that the accuracy of the best law enforcement processes on identifying bad people would be cause for reflection.

I remember reading a book written by a French Paratrooper in Algiers. The French really could not tell good guy from bad guy. They would bring these people in on sweeps, torture them all, kill a few. They were successful in creating ever lasting enemies out of the survivors.

I have heard estimates that between 30% and 50% of the people in Gitmo are just no bodies doing nothing but who were caught up in American sweeps.

The administration will have to change before we find out the true statistics, reports unclassified, but I am going to bet that nothing useful was found after all the waterboarding, sleep depravation, beatings, were conducted against the people in custody.

This will be remembered as a shameful period in American history, just like the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII.
 
So you think a poll taken from a skewed segment of the population is a valid representation of the entire population in general?
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No. Its it not definitive. However it is evidence to the contrary.
 
The law enforcement community and the intelligence community are often very wrong in identifying bad guys.
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Have any facts to support that statement?

I have heard estimates that between 30% and 50% of the people in Gitmo are just no bodies doing nothing but who were caught up in American sweeps.
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What does that have to do with waterboarding. There was no doubt about the guilt of the 3 men waterboarded.


The administration will have to change before we find out the true statistics, reports unclassified, but I am going to bet that nothing useful was found after all the waterboarding, sleep depravation, beatings, were conducted against the people in custody.
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Sorry, but your 'bet' doesn't stand up to the facts.
 
A meaningless, skewed statistic is not evidence of anything.
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Because it is not a sample of america as a whole does not mean it is meaningless or skewed. It simply means that its not definitive.
 
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