Psst … one *elicits *information. The means of doing so can be illicit, though.
Thank you.
It’s definitely torture, as anyone in the military who has actually had it done to them would tell you. Oh, it’s probably not as bad as having your fingernails ripped out, or hot pokers applied to various tender parts of your body…but the reason it’s used it that it’s highly uncomfortable from a physical perspective and from a psychological perspective it’s terrifying. How anyone could endure more than once or twice is beyond me (I had it done to me in the military and can say there isn’t a lot I WOULDN’T do to not have to repeat the process, including telling whoever was threatening me with it whatever they wanted me to say).
The question has always been whether or not the US should use such methods in order to extract information from our enemies…not whether something like waterboarding seriously does not constitute torture. I think the RW types have WANTED to portray waterboarding as torture lite for their own purposes, because I think if the true extent of the technique was understood by the public that the majority of American’s would be against it.
-XT
That’s what I’m saying! Slittings one’s wrists doesn’t seem like a big deal either. It still takes a dumbass to test it out.
Shit, the very fact that there’s a debate about whether its torture or not tells me that at minimum it’s close enough to not worth risking my life or sanity over. But thank God there are curious idiots out there who can’t reach this conclusion themselves. Who would we laugh at, if not them?
We don’t need to pretend. We ARE.
The counter to that argument is “see, liberals do think waterboarding can be justified. They’d use it against a Republican to score partisan political points, but they won’t use it against real terrorists to protect innocent Americans.”
I know that the statements about waterboarding Cheney are a mixture of hyperbole, anger, and frustration. But if torture is wrong, it’s always wrong. It was wrong when it was used to elicit false confessions. It would be wrong to force it on Cheney to elicit a true confession.
If someone like Muller volunteers to undergo waterboarding, that’s different. I wouldn’t encourage it, but I can’t stop it, and I give him some credit for putting himself on the line to back up his words. For Cheney, Hannity, et al., the contradiction between their words and their actions is probably the closest we’ll get to an admission that it is torture.
I didn’t say one damn word about torture and I resent you trying to put words in my mouth. We all know that waterboarding IS NOT torture; it is simply an enhanced interrogation technique. And I would still like to see Cheney subjected to it.
Of course, and while someone who hates Cheney might like it, it’s illegal. We have a legal system, and the last administration should have been subject to it.
Who’s ‘we’, kimosabe?
-XT
Personally, I also think it’d be rather nice if Cheney, Hannity, Limbaugh, and other such advocates of "enhanced interrogations would report for a good water boarding. Not (primarily) for my own rather sick enjoyment, but so they can understand exactly what it is they are saying is not torture. Their belief in the appropriateness of their actions stems from the idea that if it don’t cause permanent physical damage, it ain’t torture. As Col. Potter so frequently was heard to say, horse hockey. Torture is mental far more than physical. Likely until they experience it, they will never understand it.
It has nothing to do with their politics and everything to do with their advocating of the practice itself. I’d say the same if it were Keith Olberman, Al Gore, and Santa.
Better than Republicans or masturbating?
[sub]Can we be both?[/sub]
Just as Congress refuses to be non partisan, so do we.
But it’s fun. I just hope Congress has a better reason.
All part part of the liberals’ War on Christmas.
Oh my G-d, they know we’re Jews!
“Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it.”
- Mark Twain, On Onanism
You and me, kid.
You and I.
:rolleyes:
A fair number of ladies with the surname .jpg would beg to differ on that last point.
May I do a brief drive-by posting? I came across this in my reading yesterday and thought it might add to the discussion:
“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.”
-Tacitus (c. 100)
Ah, but many of us are bitching about them.
Alleged terrorists.
Actually, they weren’t even charged with a crime, so they weren’t even alleged terrorists. They were just guys the government cross-their-hearts-and-hope-to-die promised were terrorists.