Is that link supposed to prove waterboarding isn’t torture? All it says is that Saddam used these techniques (some of which also occurred in Abu Ghraib and other places under our jurisdiction). Waterboarding wasn’t on there, but it wasn’t a complete list of all practices considered to be torture, nor was it intended as such.
I think he’s saying those things are universally agreed as torture, while waterboarding falls somewhere short of universal agreement.
Which is a a mighty specious argument, but worth a shot.
NPR is wrong on to aviod the word torture to appear impartial. That said, it doesn’t make them a conservative media outlet and it sure as hell does not make them worse than Fox News.
Hentor, your case is just as ridiculously flawed as those who claim that the media carries a pervasive liberal bias. You cherry pick errors and/or foibles and blow them out of proportion to suit your own sense of bias. If you’re not even smart enough to figure that out, there’s no point in arguing with you. Instead I will craft an argument that is intellectually equal to all of your forthcoming fervent rebuttals.:rolleyes:
Minor thought experiment for you here. I know the bolded word will present you with some difficulty, but just do your best.
Let’s transport ourselves back, say, 10 years ago, before the idea of waterboarding entered America’s cultural mainstream. And suppose that, 10 years ago, we were involved in some similar conflict in the Middle East, with a regime about as bad as Saddam Hussein’s.
And suppose, in one of their bombing runs, a few American planes were shot down, and their pilots managed to eject safely, only to be captured by the enemy.
And further suppose that, in an attempt to obtain intelligence about America’s war plans, these pilots were subjected to waterboarding (and ONLY to waterboarding).
What percentage of Americans do you think, under those circumstances, would have described waterboarding as torture? Do you think the number would be less than, say, 98 percent?
A pedantic sniff and a quibble. Waterboarding entered American consciousness back about 1900, when we were busily liberating the Philippines from both the Spanish and its native population. It was called the “water cure”, a sprightly euphemism, like “long spoon” for “bayonet”. This is back in the day when “American imperialism” actually meant something tangible and specific.
Tell ya what, let’s say you strap somebody into a chair and crush his knuckles in a knucle-buster…or cut his skin into strips and then slowly peel them away…or cut his fingers off one knuckle at a time with a pair of pruning loppers…or put his nuts in a vice and squeeze them until they’re flat as a pancake.
Then ask him if waterboarding is torture.
During WWII and previous times, the methods above and similar were what were regarded as torture. The definition keeps getting wussified. In another thirty years or so the ilk will be screaming that detention itself is torture. (And besides, as far as we know only three people under U.S. custody were ever waterboarded - including the asshole who planned 9-11 - so it is highly inaccurate, not to mention prejudicial, to make blanket referrals to U.S. interrogation techniques as torture, if waterboarding is to be considered the benchmark…as it almost always is.)
So in my opinion there is considerable room for disagreement that waterboarding (or any of our other interrogation techniqes) is torture, and I applaud NPR for making the effort to be more objective in its presentation of the news.
It has been my experience that the people whinging most loudly about our treatment of our enemies are the same people who were rabidly anti-Republican and anti-Iraq-war in the first place, and this is just another arrow in their quiver of manufactured outrage toward anything done by a Republican administration.
Similarly, it’s been my experience that people who don’t consider waterboarding torture are the same people who blindly excuse the Bush administration and all of its policies because of blind partisanship. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just manly men such as yourself who are worried about the definition of torture becoming increasingly “wussified”. I know, I know - back in the 50s, men could take a waterboarding without complaining about how it made them “feel” and all that liberal hippie shit.
That certainly explains why the U.S. included waterboarding in its list of torture crimes for which it prosecuted members of the Japanese military following WWII. All the Yanks and Brits held by the Japanese during WWII were just looking forward to the future when their moderate treatment by the enemy could be labeled torture–the wusses.
But everyone knows that American WWII POWs were just a bunch of wusses who wouldn’t know real torture if it poked them in the eye with a red-hot lance. Hell, Starving Artist is so tough he waterboards himself before bed every night. At least, that’s one possible explanation for the lack of oxygen getting to his brain.
Well, torture was perfectly OK before the dirty fucking hippies screwed everything up, in the 50’s, torture was practiced in a polite and civil fashion.
It was also the case that detainees didn’t want to be given rights all of a sudden. They wanted their rights to be doled out gradually over a long period of time. Everyone knows that getting rights is like coming up from the depths - you can get the bends if you do it too fast.
They don’t use the word “torture” so as not to take sides? Well, I hope they do not use the word “terrorists” because that would be taking sides too.
Yo Stavin’! You take three minutes of waterboarding and I’ll let you go all Hannibal Lecter on moi.
There’s an offer you can’t refuse.
I’ll go you one better, Red. He doesn’t have to do the waterboarding at all, and I’ll still invite him to eat me.
For folks who claim to love America, people like Starving Artist and Shodan always appear to have remarkably low standards for the so-called World’s Greatest Nation.
Apparently, the standard by which America is judged is that of the world’s most brutal dictators. As long as we’re not as bad as them, then all is hunky-dory, and no criticism or call for improvement is to be countenanced. I, for one, am impressed at just how low they set the bar.
Perhaps the answer is that we are more concerned with protecting our citizenry from terrorist attack than we are with obsequiously trying to curry favor with foreign countries who are only going to do what they think is best for themselves anyway.
If I have my hands on Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the 9-11 mastermind) and I believe that torturing him will result in information that saves American lives, I’m gonna do precisely that and not give a single, solitary care to what someone in some other country thinks of me for doing it…or whether you or anyone else thinks I’m uncivilized or barbaric.
And this in no way puts me on the same level as Hussein or any other ‘brutal dictator’. They are attacking other countries, murdering their own citizens, enriching themselves at the expense of their own countrymen, and imposing an atmosphere of fear and oppression upon everyone unfortunate enough to live in the countries over which they have a stranglehold; I on the other hand, am merely saving innocent lives.
To suggest that there is no difference between me and a brutal dictator simply because I would torture a terrorist mastermind (and the CIA has reported that the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ it used on KSM did indeed yield information that allowed it to thwart a terrorist attack on Los Angeles Link), merely shows the hysterical lengths you are willing to go to to try to lay claim to the moral high ground and to dishonestly portray anyone who disagrees with you as evil.
As for myself, I’ll take saving innocent American lives any day over your good esteem.
…Starving Artist my good friend, I must disagree strongly with you. The definition of torture is not getting wussified: the techniques for torture are getting more sophisticated.
Imagine a 1930’s style ray gun, that when pointed at you causes sustained, persistant agony. You feel like someone has cut a hole in your stomach and is pulling out your intestines and stomping on them. You feel a needle pricking at your eyeballs. The ray gets turned off, the pain stops, and the person holding the raygun says he will keep on doing it until you confess. So he keeps turning it on until you eventually admit that you did it.
Yet, when the ray is turned off, you are perfectly fine. There are no marks on your body. You have sustained no injury. Have you been tortured?
I would state that uncatagorically and absolutely yes you have been.
Take anyone who has experienced waterboarding and ask them the very question you asked: is waterboarding torture?
I challenge you to find anyone who has experienced it to give the answer “no it isn’t.”
This is waterboarding. Controlled conditions: if the safe word is mentioned the waterboarding stops.
Hitchens lasts seconds before having to stop. It doesn’t look painful, but it is. It doesn’t leave a mark, but that doesn’t matter. We have had one of our own dopers waterboard himself. His opinion? Torture.
The only people to claim that it isn’t are the only ones with a vested interest in it being declared “not torture,” and that was the previous administration.
Hi, Banquet Bear, it’s good to hear from you. 
Perhaps I should clarify the circumstances under which I think torture, whether waterboarding or some other method, is justified. I don’t approve of torture if it’s used to obtain confessions. Of course almost anyone would confess to anything to get that torture to stop. And I don’t approve of its use as a fishing expedition to see if someone knows something. But I do approve of it if there is ample evidence that the person in question has been involved in planning attacks on Americans or her allies - whether the targets are military or civilian - and that the information elicited is likely to result in thwarting those attacks or in saving lives. I would also approve of its use in order to obtain information as to where hostages are being held…and especially in those cases where the hostages are likely to be beheaded or otherwise killed by their captors in order to make some sort of political statement.
But my main purpose in this thead is to contest the notion that America in the main is a torturing entity. We have waterboarded three people, one of which was the 9-11 mastermind and whose waterboarding elicited information that prevented an attack on Los Angeles. In view of this extremely limited use of waterboarding by the U.S. (and use that has prevented innocent American deaths at that) it hardly stands to reason in my mind to portray the United States as an entity that wantonly engages in wholesale torturing of its prisoners, which is how many posters around here are prone to characterize things.
I’m aware that everyone who has been voluntarily waterboarded has agreed that it was torture. Still, would you not agree that it is more humane and less harmful than the methods I outlined upthread? I’m sorry, but I just can’t get too worked up over the highly selective use of waterboarding on certain key prisoners who very likely have information that will save American lives.
I know that you very likely don’t agree with me, and coming from you I respect that, but it’s the eagerness and dishonesty with which so many posters around here try to portray the U.S. as gleefully torturing anyone and everyone it can that I’m challenging, and not so much whether or not waterboarding itself actually qualifies as torture.
Take good care my friend. I hope you are safe, wherever you are.
If you have “ample evidence” of future attacks, to the point where you know who planned it, have that person in custody, and know enough about the plan to know torture is justified and identify the false positives that will arise from your interrogation techniques, what do you need the torture for? And if you don’t even trust torture to generate the right answer to a simple yes/no question like “Did you do it?”, how can it be considered a useful intelligence-gathering technique?
Hold on, that’s your moral event horizon? As long as we don’t flay people alive, anything is fair game?
Yes, funny how I keep unfairly taking note of the odd example of NPR’s “fair and balanced” approach to journalism.
Read the comments to the ombudsman. Hell, take note of the fact that NPR’s ombudsman is supposed to represent the listeners, not the organization. Check out NPRcheck.blogspot.com. Read the comments on the Greenwald article.