Do you think waterboarding is torture?

[Brotherska]

Hi DWill:

Amusing enough, brotherska? Would you yourself try this out? Hitchens did this for professional reasons, and obviously you don't believe his conclusions about the technique.

Of course I believe Hitchens account. My point is that he found it amusing, or ticklish, or surprisingly mild enough to want to do it again. Do you understand me now? He expected real torture, but he realized failed expectations. He found the second try less comfortable. Why? There are several possible reasons that I can think of, including.

1. He rejected all advice, and decided to repeat the experience without being properly prepared.

2. He approached the second try as a game (which is understandable given his first experience with it), and determined that he would try to stay in the game for as long as possible the second time around.

Yes, they did insist that he cool down a bit after his first try, but I doubt that any prisoner would be water-boarded in relatively quick succession like Hitchins. It would make more sense to allow the prisoner to recover, and be interrogated and ponder his fate, rather than water-board him again so quickly.

Therefore, if a poor candidate like Hitchens (with age, fitness, and health against him) could do it once, and be so eager to try it again, then could we not define it as fun when compared with real torture?

Look, I'm no expert on this, and I don't want to sound naive, either. But there are opinions by experienced people to consider, to the effect that torture doesn't work as well other interrogation techniques, anyway.

OK DWill, then please provide the safest of these effective interrogation techniques that these "experienced people" have recommended.

Regards.

[DWill]

OK DWill, then please provide the safest of these effective interrogation techniques that these "experienced people" have recommended.

First, Brotherska, don't take this amiss, but I'm having trouble believing you're serious in the way you represent Hitchens' reaction to waterboarding. He titled the article, "Believe Me, It's Torture," after all. He says that if waterboarding isn't torture, then nothing is. This opinion puts him in the same camp as John McCain.

As for your request, I'm not referring to the safest means of torture, as you seem to be, but to techniques that you must have seen written about, which do not require torture to extract information. Again claiming no expertise, I simply refer you to the opinions from knowledgeable people that using torture does not in general produce quality intelligence. You'll have no trouble finding articles.

[Chris OConnor]

Ophelia said:

I was surprised when I read the question. Unless you are a member of the former Bush administration or a supporter, would you think of asking it?

As usual you're passing judgments. Obviously, to you, only idiots that supported Bush would ever attempt to argue that water boarding is not torture. In reality this question was found by me on a liberal Tampa Bay Florida news web site.

First of all...
I posted the question to stimulate discussion, just like the news web site did, and not to express my view that water boarding is not torture. There was nothing in the wording of my question to cause you to believe I was making the argument that water boarding is not torture. Yet you assumed that was my intention. So who is the one not thinking so clearly and critically here? Me, for having the audacity to ask such a controversial question, or you, for assuming that I was asking it because I hold one position over another?

[Chris OConnor]

I happen to believe that water boarding is indeed torture. My next question would be...

Is torture ever justified?

[Chris OConnor]

Christopher Hitchens, someone who has actually been waterboarded, said in the Vanity Fair article:

When contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay.

[Chris OConnor]

Hitchens also says:

If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens.

This is my argument. The Golden Rule, so to speak.

[Chris OConnor]

Earlier in the article, after being water boarded, Hitchens says:

Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

To me you'd have to be quite ignorant to argue that water boarding is not torture. And I mean "ignorant" as in uninformed as to the procedure and physiological and psychological responses of the person being water boarded. It must be a horrific experience and I'd challenge anyone who attempts to argue that it isn't torture to subject themselves to the same experience as Christopher Hitchens.

The real question remains. Should the United States water board in certain circumstances where we have reasons to believe the prisoner knows information that could stop the death of thousands of innocent people? Where do we draw the line? When is it OK to drown someone in a controlled environment? How about electrocute them or whip them to get them to give up information?

I always like to put myself in the other persons shoes before I form a rigid opinion, and I cannot imagine how horrible it would be to be captured and tortured and not even have the information my captives seek. Wouldn't we all start saying anything and everything to make the torture stop?

But what if we know for a fact that the prisoner knows the details of an impending attack? Isn't it then justified? If we can save 2,500 people isn't it worth torturing and even killing one man?

[Chris OConnor]

I'll add that water boarding is not even in the same category as the forms of torture I have personally watched in underground videos. As Suzanne says water boarded prisoners are up walking around immediately after their experience with no physical signs of abuse. Yes, they are psychologically tormented, but they aren't scarred physically.

What the US does in comparison to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime is a night and day difference. The US doesn't dip people into burning oil or slowly lower them into wood chippers. We don't slice out tongues or smash their feet with hammers. We don't take them to the edge of a 4-story building and make them jump down and break their legs and hips. All of this happens or happened in the Middle East.

We stick prisoners in cells for long periods of time. The Taliban slices their heads off with swords, hangs them from cranes in public squares, lines up dozens of men and one by one shoots them in the back of the head on the spot with no trial.

Because the US is always in the limelight we are held to such a higher standard than other nations. I don't see much of a protest in other nations about the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but the moment the US does something even remotely questionable the US flag is burning in the streets and people are rioting. All of that energy ought to go towards addressing the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but the Taliban and Al Qaeda shoot back. It is far easier to attack the US politically and forget the atrocities being committed daily in the Middle East. Don't worry...the US, England, Australia and Canada will rid the world of terrorism, right? How about helping?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing for torture. This is one of those subjects where I am refraining from forming a solid opinion right now. There are simply too many variables that are unknown.

But to all those people of the world that tend to focus on what the United States does or does not do you have a nightmare about to unfold on you in Pakistan. At some point you'll have to stop pretending terrorism isn't such a big deal as the Taliban are going to need to be stopped in Pakistan. And if your nation doesn't have the courage to join the United States and other forces in stopping the Taliban the world's future will be in jeopardy.

What would happen in the Taliban nuked Israel after ceasing Pakistani nukes?

[MaryLupin]

But what if we know for a fact that the prisoner knows the details of an impending attack? Isn't it then justified? If we can save 2,500 people isn't it worth torturing and even killing one man?

The problem is that we can't really know for a fact. We can be pretty sure. We might even be right. But we can't be certain. We would be choosing to torture on our best geuss. It is the same problem with the death penalty. There have been people put to death because we were certain they were guilty but on later evidence (usually DNA or some recent technological innovation) it turned out that they were not guilty. But then the damage is done.

The damage with torture (apart fromt the permanent change to the mind of the tortured) is a loss of moral standing - a loss of reputation. The United States is held to a higher standard. I agree. People do that with heroes. And that status is critically important. The reputation that the US has had for not going so far is a large part of its real world power. Military might will not keep us safe if we lose that edge. I mean what if the next time the Taleban dropped a nuke instead of flying planes.

The US has been insulated for a long time. I rather suspect that it was the reputation the US had as a place that wasn't like all the rest that provided that buffer so rudely ripped on 9/11.

[Ophelia]

A democracy can't justify improper actions by saying that non-democratic countries are doing far worse.
Waterboarding would be condemned just the same if another western democracy was using it.
As to protesting against tyrants, groups likre Amnesty International do it, write letters, etc... For ordinary people it's more difficult because tyrants or countries that are not really democracies (I have my doubts about Pakistan for example) do not feel accountable to public opinion.
with countries like the US people always hope that if they protest enough some people will come to their senses, and a new government will listen and change things.
A lot of things are changing with Obama, and the need for those changes was internal, not only protest from abroad.
Often we don't talk much about much worse horrors happening say, Zimbabwe, because we feel so powerless, but it doesn't mean that there is no criticism. With the US the criticism is more vocal, that's all.
The US is always in the limelight, but it's also the only country that has claimed very loud that they were showing the beacon of democracy and were willing to export its principles abroad. With such professed principles you must only allow yourself the highest standards and can't allow yourself to use even the lowest step on the torture ladder.
The United Nations had asked the US to stop waterboarding on several occasions.