Conservative radio hosts gets waterboarded

[cosmosdan]

@magellan01

I saw this thread when it opened and just scanned it. I haven’t read it, but I do have a couple of questions. Some of which are specific to waterboarding, but I’m more interested in the others. So,

1. what is torture? Not, “what techniques qualify as torture”, but what defines it. The best dictionary definition fro dictionary.com seems to be:

So, we know that pain need be involved. I think we’d all agree on that. And that drilling into someone’s teeth or ripping their fingernails out would easily qualify. But where is the line between extreme discomfort, or just annoying discomfort applied over time and outright, excruciating pain?

According to your own definition physical pain doesn’t need to be involved.
I wouldn’t expect there to be a clear definition where the line is drawn but in this case water boarding has already been declared to be torture and meets your definition.

Also, are non-physical acts “torture”, as well? If I play one Abba song over and over and over again in order to annoy someone sufficiently to give up info, is that torture?

hearing is physical. locking someone in complete darkness is physical. Prolonged mental anguish and torment is torture by your own definition.

2. What is the difference between “torture” and “enhanced interrogation techniques”? Let’s say there’s an act that you, personally, falls into the latter category. what is it. What makes it an enhanced interrogation technique and not torture?

No answer. Is slapping torture? One slap? 10? 100?

Now, let’s assume that there exists an enhanced interrogation technique you are okay with. Let’s also assume that it comes with a commensurate increase in effectiveness, as small as it may be. Isn’t safe to say that this technique will deliver discomfort to the suspect? If so, how much discomfort can one apply until it moves into the torture category?

too many assumptions. It seems fairly obvious that the specific line where interrogation becomes torture is not absolutely defined. The subject of this thread, water boarding, is defined as torture.

3. Leaving aside whether waterboarding is torture or not for now, and assuming it falls short of that and is “merely” an enhanced interrogation technique, it would still deliver discomfort, correct? I ask this because of the weight Mancow’s conclusion seems to be given. What criteria is he using? We see him go from absolute panic to being completely lucid and free of pain in the matter of a minute or two. The fact that an enhanced interrogation technique was a greatly unpleasant experience doesn’t surprise me in the least—such a technique would have to be unpleasant.

That was after 5 seconds of one experience and he still called it torture. Perhaps his standard is acknowledging how bad his experience felt and imagining it multiplied many times over.

4. I’ve been on the fence as to whether waterboarding is torture or not, leaning toward “it is”. This stunt actually pushed me to start leaning the other way. It seems to simply create panic in the brain for a few seconds, and then it’s over. Also, if people can go through it dozens of times, with no scars or long-term effects, doesn’t that argue for the “not-torture” conclusion?

Where are you getting the “few seconds” How can you possibly know if people can go through it dozens of times with no long term affects? Aren’t you assuming things not in evidence. John McCain went on to have a decent successful life after Viet Nam. Does that mean he wasn’t tortured?

Let’s move to Orwell’s Room 101. The protaganist is terrified of rats. In order to get him to straighten out, they place a large cage over his head with hungry rats in it, with him protected by a divider that keeps the rats on their side of the cage. The rats never get to him, but the mere thought of it, and the slightest hint of the divider being removed is enough for him to conform.

So, is this torture?

Yes.

In the extreme case of the ticking nuclear bomb in NYC, would you advocate such a technique?

If someone had kidnapped my daughter and buried her alive with a limited time to find her before she died, and I was 99% sure the man I had was the man who knew where she was then fucking A I’d torture him to find her. There’d still be no guarantee that I’d be successful or that another technique wouldn’t be just as effective.

Even at that there’s a huge difference between that speculation about an imagined scenario and what happens in the real world. It barely relates.

[gaffa]

Actual FBI interrogators like Jack Cloonan have stated quite plainly that torture isn’t necessary, that the “ticking bomb” scenario doesn’t happen in the real world, and that the USA torturing and having a reputation for doing so is al Queda’s most effective recruiting tool.

A great Daily Show bit about “wiggle room”.

[tagos]

@Stealth_Potato

Frankly, I’m impressed that he had the courage to go through with it,

No courage involved as he did not believe it would be a big deal.

[Sampiro]

Right bloggers are now claiming the waterboarding was a hoax. It started at gawkerand is gaining a lot of repetition and commentary and links at other blogs. General theory is that because Erich “Mancow” Muller is a shock jock who does crazy shit for publicity, this was done totally for ratings on his show and Olbermann’s.

The WMDs are still real though.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

It’s always helpful when one can declare one’s own reality whenever the nonsolipsistic version becomes inconvenient.

[Liberal]

“You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.”— Jesse Ventura

- YouTube

[tomndebb]

I’ve never been a Ventura fan, but I’d pay to watch that.

[Find_Friends]

@Ca3799

…The upshot? “It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow told listeners. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

Simulated drowning is really, really hard to take? So hard you might beg for it to end?

:dubious: A-duhhhh…

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been what one would call macho. But the very first time I read a complete description of it, I felt that that was pretty close to torture! Just thinking about it, that is!

***True, and Blue, but just plain wussy at times…

• Jack***