As you both comes off as educated, bright and ethical individuals who happened to serve in the US military, my only suggestion would be to go forth and reproduce. Or clone. And then infiltrate. Whichever is more effective/quicker.
Og knows we need more of your kind.
Kind of a small hijack and waaaay late, but, Guinastasia, do you live such an incredibly pampered life that you don’t realise that what you call “basic necessities” are above what half of the people of the world (including, I’d guess, most terrorists) live with? Billions of people would improve how they live by your “basic necessities” scheme.
Hijack is over
To hijack the hijack, while your basic point is absolutely right–and the idea that hardened terrorists would crack under the threat of boredom strikes me as, to be charitable, naive–my understanding is that al Qaeda recruits heavily from the middle class of nations like Saudi Arabia. Terrorists are in some ways similar to punk: a lot of them are just disaffected privileged youth.
Daniel
Yeah, but then (i.e. if your middle-class terrorist scenario is true) those would be the guys who would sing like *The Three Tenors * at the thougth of “real torture”.
BTW, incredibly stupid what the OP dis, as informative a it may be.
Was there some doubt about waterboarding being torture?
I’m just glad—how do I say this?----that someone skeptical about its decency has changed his mine and done so in a way which simply cannot be doubted. There are some people who will not trust others without proof, collateral, what have you.
If you wouldn’t do it to someone you cared about, or yourself, if it causes pain or mental anguish, then it’s wrong. If you do it to get information, then you have violated your principles and enabled the subject to feel superior to you. That superiority might keep him silent and righteous for months and strengthen his resolve. While some of these guys regard us as weak, let them. The insurgents I spoke to were always kind of shocked at how the Americans fought, but that shouldn’t have been a surprise: we knew torture and death would be the result if we were captured.
You have to be able to say to yourself that no matter what other peoples’ standards are, no matter what is expediant, you held the line and did the decent thing, no matter what it cost you.
It’s relevant here but the whistle blower in the Abu Ghraib thing was hounded from his town and from the military, when he should have reaped accolades as a hero of conscience and character. That’s because the people tortured there were those whom others regard as expendable or ‘different.’ Until we can change the way Americans look at Muslims, we’re just fighting symptoms, I think.
Serving in Iraq was eye-opening for me. I came home with a perspective I hadn’t had before on the culture, and no matter what it cost me it was worth it. And there is a cost, because bigotry about Muslims is rampant.
Oops. I assumed (yeah, I know – never assume) that “Islamist” was a synonym for “follower of Islam.” I’ve done my reading now. Ignorance fought. I’ll retract my snarky comment.
Can you possibly find a wider brush? I think a very small proportion of Americans would support the killing of non-combat civilians in anything other than self-defense, and an even tinier number would support the spread of terror.
People who took action based on incorrect information (such as Democrats that supported the war, or people who supported Bush before the attack on Iraq was even conceived) deserve death? Our worldviews are so horribly far apart that I can’t even begin to understand your thinking.
Congrats, honest and true, to you. It takes a rare sort of a person to not just recognize a mistake but publicly admit and correct it.
Nuance is sooooo John Kerry. 
Hyperbole and bombast have become the coins of the political realm.
It’s funny, in a sad way. If you claimed “Muslims are terrorists” you’d be caught out as a bigot. If you claimed “blacks are thieves” you’d be caught out as a racist. But, in certain circles, saying “Americans are scum”, will get you your bona fides.
There’s a whole lot of hate there, unfortunately.
And like a comic book badguy, or a rather disliked American leader… you’re either with us or against us, you’re either in the right of you’re an Evil Doer.
Garbage. I’ve seen almost no concern over what happens to our victims in Iraq, or other places we’ve chosen to feed our bloodlust with. Lots of speeches about the terrible sacrifices our troops are making while slaughtering people though.
“Deserves got nothing to do with it.” The backsplash of our torture and mass murders will inevitably fall upon the innocent and guilty. And anyone who paid attention knew that Bush was scum before he took office. AND, he was re-elected, AFTER we invaded Iraq. And I see little effort by anyone with any power to stop his continued rape of Iraq.
I found Scylla’s post to be interesting because, while intellectually I knew waterboarding was torture, until I read his post I could not understand that viscerally. I can easily imagine having my fingernails torn off, having red-hot irons poked into my body, thumbscrews, electric shock, etc., and I can viscerally understand those as torture–but having water poured over Saran wrap on my mouth sounded, prior this post, less torturous than a wedgie. Again, it’s clearly torture, given that people break so quickly under it, and I knew that; I just didn’t get why it was torture.
Now I do.
Daniel
Ba dump BAH!
Yes, there was/is.
Wasn’t it the OP’s point to prove it? At least he had enough doubt.
BTW, Was/Is there a thread that debates what torture is? I mean, where the line is drawn between tough interrogation and torture?
The Spanish Inquisition didn’t have Saran Wrap…what could they have done to make this effective enough to be one of their favorite techniques?
Well done Scylla…thanks so much for this riveting post.
Pig’s bladder.
Hey, you’re too soft. I was thinking of the situation where there’s a nuclear bomb about to explode, we might have the guy, and he won’t tell us how to disable it.
Oh, maybe that’s not enough. How about the situation where there might be a nuclear bomb, we are trying to see if we have the guy, and he won’t tell us how to disable it.
Oh, I don’t want to miss the situation were we’re trying to see if there is a nuclear bomb, we have a guy, and we think there is a nuclear bomb because we waterboarded some other guy who said there was a bomb after we asked him if there was a bomb, oh, I don’t know, ten or twenty times.
These are the most important questions.
Ah, I forgot “we are trying to find another guy who might know the guy who has the bomb we are not sure exists”, which is the most realistic of all scenarios.
I didn’t want to hijack the discussion going on in this thread, so I started a GQ thread asking about some of the details of how waterboarding works, mainly concerning Scylla’s assertion that as long as the lungs are above the head you won’t drown. Link
Before the invention of cling wrap which made waterboarding hands-free, mess-free and conveinient (it’s not just for leftovers,) Inquisitors were forced to ducttape plastic bags to the faces of those they tortured. This was of course extremely painful when removed, so, in addition to all of its other benefits, Saran Wrap makes torture more humane.
*Actually they just used wet rags back then.
Count me in as another person dragged onto this board by PZ Myers.
First off, to the OP, I’d like to applaud your courage, determination, and your ability to swallow your politics and be honest. I know I would never have the guts to do something like what you did.
Second of all, to Der Tribs, while I, being liberal, disagree with the “war on terror” throughally, I ALSO disagree with you implying that anybody that supports WoT is just as bad as the terrorists. Most people who support the WoT are simply ordinary folks, many of them are certainly nice people who you or I would enjoy sitting down to dinner with, the Bush Admins. and it’s upper level cronies are scumbags, but most people that support their war on terror are not, they are simply misguided and/or ill-informed. To say that they are all as bad as the terrorists is utterly unjust. They are mostly basically good people that have been lied to and manipulated by an administration that may well be as bad or worse then Al Queada and friends.
Sorry, laziness does not cut it. No matter how good and decent you regard yourself, if you are going to support starting a war then you better get off your behind and find out if you are being told the truth. Der Trihs has it right. Complacency in self-righteous America was the war’s enabler.
Many professional terrorists would make great dinner companions too, in addition to having the integrity to know who they are. Those ‘basically good people’ who supported the war are vermin and deserve the same treatment civilisation affords to vermin.
I signed up just to say two things.
great description of waterboarding, your description really put it into terms we can all wrap our heads around.
I think a video of this could have possibly had serious national consequences as far as changing people’s views and possibly ending the US’s use of waterboarding.