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Here’s the Latest Evidence Torture Doesn’t Keep Us Safe

What is false is the claim that only one prisoner was tortured, and only waterboarding was used.

I don't know who was tortured, if anyone, or how it may have been done. But the U.S. government did not authorize the torture of anyone. I have read hundreds of pages of the legal memos on this subject, which I've had an interest in since even before 9/11, and the waterboarding technique that was approved did not even come close to violating any applicable U.S. law regarding torture.

It is the "righties," not the "lefties" who are ready to go along with the extremists who want a war between the west and Islam.

Apparently you would rather appease the Islamic jihadist curs who chose to make war on the United States. Your comments suggest you share their dislike of this country.

That figures.

It's interesting that you would attack a man for trying to alert the American people to the vast network of Communist subversion that infested a wide range of federal agencies, the details of which have now been well documented. I'll assume it's because you know next to nothing about that history, including the Venona decrypts which the U.S. published in the 1990's.

For anyone who is not an anti-American leftist and wants to learn the truth about this subject, which is far different from what most people think they know about it, the definitive study is Stanton Evans' "Blacklisted by History." It is a very thoroughly documented 600-plus page book which came out in 2007. It draws on tens of thousands of pages of official documents--and there are hundreds of thousands more pages of them yet to be studied--which have come to light decades after Sen. McCarthy's death.

These documents, some of which contain information about Soviet agents and their espionage networks in the U.S. that the FBI obtained through various types of surveillance, prove that most of what McCarthy was saying was all too true. Hundreds of Soviet agents, other Communists, and people who collaborated with them lived in this country while working for its adversaries, and other leftist liars in high places did all they could to cover it up. These liars hated McCarthy and destroyed him because he threatened to expose the reckless disregard for our national security that had characterized both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations during the 1940's and that continued during McCarty's investigations in the early 1950's.

I noticed you stopped talking about slavery.

I couldn't have, since I never started talking about it. If discussing slavery satisfies your need to slander this country, you can discuss it with someone else.
 
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I don't know who was tortured, if anyone, or how it may have been done. But the U.S. government did not authorize the torture of anyone. I have read hundreds of pages of the legal memos on this subject, which I've had an interest in since even before 9/11, and the waterboarding technique that was approved did not even come close to violating any applicable U.S. law regarding torture.



Apparently you would rather appease the Islamic jihadist curs who chose to make war on the United States. Your comments suggest you share their dislike of this country.



It's interesting that you would attack a man for trying to alert the American people to the vast network of Communist subversion that infested a wide range of federal agencies, the details of which have now been well documented. I'll assume it's because you know next to nothing about that history, including the Venona decrypts which the U.S. published in the 1990's.

For anyone who is not an anti-American leftist and wants to learn the truth about this subject, which is far different from what most people think they know about it, the definitive study is Stanton Evans' "Blacklisted by History." It is a very thoroughly documented 600-plus page book which came out in 2007. It draws on tens of thousands of pages of official documents--and there are hundreds of thousands more pages of them yet to be studied--which have come to light decades after Sen. McCarthy's death.

These documents, some of which contain information about Soviet agents and their espionage networks in the U.S. that the FBI obtained through various types of surveillance, prove that most of what McCarthy was saying was all too true. Hundreds of Soviet agents, other Communists, and people who collaborated with them lived in this country while working for its adversaries, and other leftist liars in high places did all they could to cover it up. These liars hated McCarthy and destroyed him because he threatened to expose the reckless disregard for our national security that had characterized both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations during the 1940's and that continued during McCarty's investigations in the early 1950's.



I couldn't have, since I never started talking about it. If discussing slavery satisfies your need to slander this country, you can discuss it with someone else.

It is not I who slanders this country, but the apologists for torturing prisoners, the historical revisionists who would bring back the McCarthy era and support the Japanese "relocation", and the voices of unreason who insist that we're in a holy war with Islam and not simply trying to eradicate a few cockroaches who would kill anyone, Muslim or not, who disagrees with their world view.

One day, as I've already said, we'll look back on such things the same way we now look back on Jim Crow and slavery. Real Americans will look back and say, "never again, not my country. That's not who we are."
 
It is not I who slanders this country, but the apologists for torturing prisoners, the historical revisionists who would bring back the McCarthy era and support the Japanese "relocation", and the voices of unreason who insist that we're in a holy war with Islam and not simply trying to eradicate a few cockroaches who would kill anyone, Muslim or not, who disagrees with their world view.

One day, as I've already said, we'll look back on such things the same way we now look back on Jim Crow and slavery. Real Americans will look back and say, "never again, not my country. That's not who we are."

I actually have heard nearly nobody that wants or even justifies torture. Enhanced interrogation yes. Torture no.
On the other hand there are a lot of people around that argue like ninkenpoops that the handbook interrogation methods constitute torture. Most of these folks have not read the read not tried out, what they are babbling about. They are just repeating for lack of information and experience, what a more malicious breed is whispering in their ears. This 5th column has become a problem.
 
I actually have heard nearly nobody that wants or even justifies torture. Enhanced interrogation yes. Torture no.
On the other hand there are a lot of people around that argue like ninkenpoops that the handbook interrogation methods constitute torture. Most of these folks have not read the read not tried out, what they are babbling about. They are just repeating for lack of information and experience, what a more malicious breed is whispering in their ears. This 5th column has become a problem.

Seems some do justify it. Trump came out in favor of the practice. Then there's this, from a few posts up:
Quote Originally Posted by Dittohead not! View Post
I see. That must mean that conservatives are the ones who support torturing prisoners then.

I'd think more so yes..

We could pretend it never happened, pretend that "enhanced interrogation" is not a euphemism for torture, even that waterboarding isn't really torture when we do it, even though it was when it was done to our own soldiers.

But, there's rendition to explain and try to forget about, and the incidents at Abu Ghraib. There's calling the prisoners "enemy combatants" instead of "prisoners of war" so the pesky Geneva Accords wouldn't apply. There's also a few incidents that, unfortunately for the apologists for torture did come to light. Here's an example. And the front runner for the Republican nomination for the office of President and commander in chief of the armed forces is in favor of torturing prisoners. Shameful and downright scary. This is not what my country stands for, not even close.
 
Seems some do justify it. Trump came out in favor of the practice. Then there's this, from a few posts up:




We could pretend it never happened, pretend that "enhanced interrogation" is not a euphemism for torture, even that waterboarding isn't really torture when we do it, even though it was when it was done to our own soldiers.

But, there's rendition to explain and try to forget about, and the incidents at Abu Ghraib. There's calling the prisoners "enemy combatants" instead of "prisoners of war" so the pesky Geneva Accords wouldn't apply. There's also a few incidents that, unfortunately for the apologists for torture did come to light. Here's an example. And the front runner for the Republican nomination for the office of President and commander in chief of the armed forces is in favor of torturing prisoners. Shameful and downright scary. This is not what my country stands for, not even close.

Did Trump propagate torture? I thought he had only condoned enhanced interrogation methods.
 
It is not I who slanders this country, but the apologists for torturing prisoners, the historical revisionists who would bring back the McCarthy era and support the Japanese "relocation", and the voices of unreason who insist that we're in a holy war with Islam and not simply trying to eradicate a few cockroaches who would kill anyone, Muslim or not, who disagrees with their world view.

One day, as I've already said, we'll look back on such things the same way we now look back on Jim Crow and slavery. Real Americans will look back and say, "never again, not my country. That's not who we are."

It's pretty clear you don't know enough about American history to make an informed judgment about whether anyone was revising it, or not. It's also pretty clear that you are running down this country while making excuses for the Islamic jihadists who are at war with it. I am proud of America, and I would never apologize to anyone in the world for anything it has done.
 
Did Trump propagate torture? I thought he had only condoned enhanced interrogation methods.

He doesn't even bother to use the euphemism "enhanced interrogation." He calls a spade a spade. He does deserve credit for that.



Trump has argued that he would authorize waterboarding and "far worse" forms of torture against suspected terrorists as president after first broadening existing laws banning torture.
"We have to change our laws and we have to be able to fight on an almost equal basis," Trump said Tuesday arguing in favor of torture and pointing to ISIS' far more brutal treatment of its prisoners.

link
 
We could pretend it never happened, pretend that "enhanced interrogation" is not a euphemism for torture, even that waterboarding isn't really torture when we do it, even though it was when it was done to our own soldiers.

But, there's rendition to explain and try to forget about, and the incidents at Abu Ghraib. There's calling the prisoners "enemy combatants" instead of "prisoners of war" so the pesky Geneva Accords wouldn't apply. There's also a few incidents that, unfortunately for the apologists for torture did come to light. Here's an example. And the front runner for the Republican nomination for the office of President and commander in chief of the armed forces is in favor of torturing prisoners. Shameful and downright scary. This is not what my country stands for, not even close.

I'm not sure I've seen so many staple items of anti-American propaganda run together outside of one of those Soviet magazines from the days of the Cold War. The U.S. editions regularly featured articles on the alleged injustice, warmongering, and general meanness of modern America, which supposedly were the inevitable result of a rotten capitalist system.

The enhanced interrogation techniques that were approved, including the waterboarding technique, were specifically designed NOT to violate any applicable U.S. law regarding torture. Your assertion that they were torture does not become any less false, no matter how many times you repeat it.

Contrary to what you are implying, no one approved what was done at Abu Ghraib. The officer in charge there was held to account for it.

The jihadists detained at Guantanamo were designated unlawful enemy combatants by President Bush because that is just what they are. The U.S. made a mistake by extending them the treatment owed to prisoners of war when they did not deserve it, apparently as part of the foolish effort to make Muslims like us by being magnanimous. Doing that created an opening for people who resent the United States to promote the falsehood you are trying to promote here. None of the detainees was ever a prisoner of war, or was ever subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Anyone who wants a good summary of the law on this subject will find one in Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942).

In that case, which involved Nazi saboteurs who landed here by U-boat, that mean man Franklin Roosevelt (you know, the same one who put all those Japanese here in concentration camps because he was a racist) had six unlawful enemy combatants electrocuted. One of them was a U.S. citizen, but that mean Roosevelt had him executed without even giving him his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to a grand jury indictment and a jury trial! And here I thought our country was better than that.

I don't care a damn if some leftist rag which does not hesitate to lie in print thinks someone engaged in torture. Of course U.S. servicemen sometimes act illegally, but the very fact the acts are illegal shows they are not condoned. I care even less what Mr. Trump shot his mouth off about. U.S. Presidents are not dictators whose word is law.
 
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It's pretty clear you don't know enough about American history to make an informed judgment about whether anyone was revising it, or not. It's also pretty clear that you are running down this country while making excuses for the Islamic jihadists who are at war with it. I am proud of America, and I would never apologize to anyone in the world for anything it has done.

It's pretty clear that you have no idea what I've been saying at all. Sorry about that. My posts may not have been as clear as I thought.
 
Honorable Men Do Not Torture Their Prisoners

Once one begins to act like the enemy there is no difference between the two except their agendas and both sides will claim to have the correct agenda.
 
I have seen articles like the one linked to here before. They are useful for leftists....
:roll:

This has absolutely nothing to do with political orientation. It's about efficacy and human rights. To wit:

• If torture doesn't work and produces bad information -- as the evidence indicates -- then from a practical perspective, no one should want to utilize it.

• Both left and right ought to agree that harsh interrogation and torture violates numerous rights, including the right to due process, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and protection from self-incrimination.

• People on both the left and right have the mistaken idea that "torture works."

• Politicians across the political spectrums -- left/right, authoritarian/democratic -- have occasionally licensed torture.

• American politicians of all stripes routinely criticize other nations that use torture. It is hypocritical to blast Assad's regime for torturing suspects, when we basically do the same thing.

Torture, ultimately, is not about extracting information. It's about inflicting harm and punishment on someone based merely upon suspicion, and it's a technique that does not work. On both ethical and practical grounds, it's gotta go.


They are useful for leftists, who, when they are not busy running down the United States, hold out the crying towel for the Islamic jihadists who chose to make war on it.
This has nothing to do with "running down the US." We should also note that right-wingers are happy to criticize both the government and Western civilization at will, as well as look the other way when their puppets (like Suharto or the Contras) engage in torture and other human-rights violations.

This has to do with effectiveness, and human rights that all parties claim they support.


The three senior Al Qaeda jihadists who were subjected to the approved waterboarding technique were not then asked to perform complex square root calculations in their head. They were asked simple questions that were vital to our national security....
Yet another person who hasn't actually read the article.

The problem isn't that they are asked to perform complex cognitive tasks. It's that when they are being waterboarded, the impulse is to say whatever you think your torturer wants to hear. Because memories are malleable, it doesn't take long for to overwrite their real memories.

The end result is that they do not produce accurate and actionable info. They produce terrible info, which results in poor policy and tactical choices.


It seems they answered well enough to let some of the other bastards be captured and further plots broken up before thousands more could be murdered.
No, it doesn't. No actionable data was gained from those tactics. Even the CIA admitted as such.

By the way, if torture can work and is legal, why don't we change the Constitution to allow law enforcement to waterboard suspects of other crimes? Perhaps cops should stop reading Miranda rights, block suspects from access to counsel, put them in stress positions and deprive them of sleep and waterboard them until they confess to the crime? It'll be like the Middle Ages all over again. Yaay!


The plain fact is that leftists side with these curs because they loathe America--and western civilization generally--just like the jihadists do.
News flash! The Weathermen are long gone. And these days, it's the right wing that seems to hate America, cannot tolerate the changing ethics of its citizens, and are apparently pinning their hopes on an authoritarian wanker with tiny hands.

Or, at the extremes, are literally planning to overthrow the government, e.g.:
Rogue Element - The New Yorker
 
He doesn't even bother to use the euphemism "enhanced interrogation." He calls a spade a spade. He does deserve credit for that.


link

Well, besides speaking like a ten years old and so being an embarrassment to the voters, he did not propose more severe "torture" than waterboarding. There he did not stipulate the degree of its use, so it remains unclear, what exactly he was asking for. If we assume it is as performed on US service people in some training courses ie like it was in the handbook on enhanced interrogation, it is, as he says, not very nice. Butit is also not torture, if torture is supposed to mean anything special. Altering our laws to be more precise on this would be helpful, as not so many schnooks could run around creating confusion with blatant populisms and propaganda.
 
Well, besides speaking like a ten years old and so being an embarrassment to the voters, he did not propose more severe "torture" than waterboarding. There he did not stipulate the degree of its use, so it remains unclear, what exactly he was asking for. If we assume it is as performed on US service people in some training courses ie like it was in the handbook on enhanced interrogation, it is, as he says, not very nice. Butit is also not torture, if torture is supposed to mean anything special....
Definition of torture, per the United Nations Torture Convention of 1984:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

There should be no doubt whatsoever that simulated drowning qualifies as a form of physical and/or mental suffering. I mean, really. How is it supposed to work, if not by inducing suffering?

Same goes for sleep deprivation, stress positions, deliberate humiliations, and so forth.

There is also no question that the purpose is obtaining information, confessions, and -- whether explicitly admitted or not -- punishment for alleged actions.

Bush 43 had a few willing lawyers who were willing to weasel their way around it. Their legal arguments are as unconvincing as Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
 
This has absolutely nothing to do with political orientation.

Of course it does. Leftists resent and dislike most things about this county. That's exactly why the Marxist liar they managed to get into the White House wants a "radical transformation" of this county--he dislikes it as it is.

Both left and right ought to agree that harsh interrogation and torture violates numerous rights, including the right to due process, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and protection from self-incrimination.

What on earth are you talking about? None of those constitutional protections applies to aliens outside U.S. territory. Unlawful enemy combatants held abroad never enjoyed any rights even associated with the Constitution of the U.S.--see Johnson v. Eisentrager. In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court arrogantly usurped the authority of the other two branches--and disingenuously overruled Eisentrager sub silentio--by saying the detainees at Guantanamo have the prvilege of the writ of habeas. That "right" is satisfied by Combatant Status Review Tribunals that are held at Guantanamo.

People on both the left and right have the mistaken idea that "torture works."

It's probably that some of us lack your preternatural wisdom. I am sure torture would work just fine on these savages. If one of the conspirators in a jihadist plot to set off an atom bomb in a U.S. city were captured, and knew where the thing was, he damned well could be made to tell us. Apparently you would do nothing harsher than just asking him nicely--after reading him his Miranda rights, of course--to cough it up. And if he smirked and told his questioners to go to hell, oh well--better to let a hundred thousand Americans get killed, than to make the filthy bastard's inner child feel all yucky.

American politicians of all stripes routinely criticize other nations that use torture. It is hypocritical to blast Assad's regime for torturing suspects, when we basically do the same thing.

Adding the qualifier "basically" can't hide the fact you are spreading a vile slander against this country. The United States has not authorized the torture of anyone. None of the approve enhanced interrogation techniques, including the waterboarding technique, was torture under applicable U.S. laws.

Torture, ultimately, is not about extracting information.

Utter nonsense. Of course that is exactly what it has often been used for.

On both ethical and practical grounds, it's gotta go.

A thing has not "gotta go" when it has never been here in the first place.

human rights that all parties claim they support.

I don't know what "human rights" are, other than a vague, feel-good phrase pseudo-liberals are fond of tossing around. Unlawful enemy combatants have very few rights of any kind. See Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942). They deserve to be tried before a military tribunal, and if convicted of war crimes, sentenced to prison or executed.

The problem isn't that they are asked to perform complex cognitive tasks. It's that when they are being waterboarded, the impulse is to say whatever you think your torturer wants to hear. Because memories are malleable, it doesn't take long for to overwrite their real memories.

You overlook the obvious fact the jihadist is still in custody, and that his story can be checked out. He knows very well that if he lets his malleable memory be overwritten, he can expect more of the same, or worse. He will know the way to avoid that is to tell all he knows before anyone can force it out of him.

The end result is that they do not produce accurate and actionable info.

Baloney. Someone who has kidnapped a child and buried him in a box knows exactly where that box is. If saving that child's life requires subjecting the son of a bitch to pain, he can be subjected to enough of it that in order to avoid any more, he will take authorities to the right spot.

Perhaps cops should stop reading Miranda rights

They never should have started reading them. Miranda v. Arizona is a notorious turkey, right down there in the Hall of Shame with Roe v. Wade, and like Roe it richly deserves to be overruled. The Supreme Court itself as much as admitted that, but in the end could not pull the trigger and put the sorry thing out of its misery.

The Weathermen are long gone.

I've seen many of the same kind of America-hating commies on sites like this one, running down the U.S. while carrying water for its enemies. Unfortunately, I had to be around quite a few of these mutts in graduate school. I know, right from their mouths, just what a low opinion they have of the country they are taking up space in, and whose benefits they enjoy.
 
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Did Trump propagate torture? I thought he had only condoned enhanced interrogation methods.

He said something to the effect that he would employ methods that make waterboarding look tame.
 
Definition of torture, per the United Nations Torture Convention of 1984:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

There should be no doubt whatsoever that simulated drowning qualifies as a form of physical and/or mental suffering. I mean, really. How is it supposed to work, if not by inducing suffering?

Same goes for sleep deprivation, stress positions, deliberate humiliations, and so forth.

There is also no question that the purpose is obtaining information, confessions, and -- whether explicitly admitted or not -- punishment for alleged actions.

Bush 43 had a few willing lawyers who were willing to weasel their way around it. Their legal arguments are as unconvincing as Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

I recall the antics of a Chicago radio personality, I think named Mad Cow, who had claimed that waterboarding was NOT torture. Being an honest and open-minded individual it seems, he agreed to be waterboarded and video in the process. He lasted about 5 seconds.

Afterwards he changed his position 180 degrees and said that by any measure it WAS torture.
 
Of course it does. Leftists resent and dislike most things about this county.
So do many on the right -- there is no end to the bitching these days. Including from you, it seems. ;)


What on earth are you talking about? None of those constitutional protections applies to aliens outside U.S. territory.
:roll:

We've been through this before.

These are HUMAN rights. The justification for due process and protection from cruel and unusual punishment itself is based on the idea that every person has those rights, no matter where or when they were born.

The "right to due process" does not stop at the US border; e.g. the CIA is not empowered to use torture if they operate a base in Canada; the FBI cannot raid a building in the UK without proper authorization and use the information in court.

Plus, a great deal of what's going on? It happened in territory under the control of the US, and by agents of the US government.

Your willingness to ditch critical human rights in the name of interrogation techniques that don't work in the first place is quite telling.


Unlawful enemy combatants held abroad never enjoyed any rights...blah blah blah
Yes, they do. We've been over this too. Your cherry-picking of the law is as outdated as your Bircherism.


Apparently you would do nothing harsher than just asking him nicely--after reading him his Miranda rights, of course--to cough it up.
If that is going to provide more accurate information? Yes. Without question.

I don't care if we have to give the suspect ice cream with sprinkles on top. All that matters is 1) getting the right information and 2) ensuring that their basic human rights are respected in the process.


Adding the qualifier "basically" can't hide the fact you are spreading a vile slander against this country. The United States has not authorized the torture of anyone.
Yes, it has. Without question, it has. Waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, all are torture. Plus, we deliberately sent suspects to nations like Egypt, knowing full well they would be tortured.

Just because a few lawyers in thrall to motivated reasoning don't think it's torture, doesn't mean it is not torture.


I don't know what "human rights" are, other than a vague, feel-good phrase pseudo-liberals are fond of tossing around.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Sound familiar?

Human rights, universal rights, inherent rights. Slightly different names, same thing. Not that difficult to understand.


Unlawful enemy combatants have very few rights of any kind.
We've been over this too. Every human being is entitled to a basic set of rights -- including due process.

They may or may not have certain rights specified in the Geneva Convention. That does not mean that if you are captured on the battlefield without wearing a uniform, the capturing army can do whatever they want to you.


You overlook the obvious fact the jihadist is still in custody, and that his story can be checked out. He knows very well that if he lets his malleable memory be overwritten, he can expect more of the same, or worse.....
lol

Yes, I'm sure terrorists extensively study cognitive science


Someone who has kidnapped a child and buried him in a box knows exactly where that box is. If saving that child's life requires subjecting the son of a bitch to pain, he can be subjected to enough of it that in order to avoid any more, he will take authorities to the right spot.
Uh huh

On one hand, we have actual research done by professional researchers.

On the other, we have a Bircher who professes to love America, yet does not understand human rights, has done zero research, and thinks that if it worked for Jack Bauer it should work in real life.

Which one is more persuasive? Hmmm.


They never should have started reading them. Miranda v. Arizona is a notorious turkey....
Yes, it's truly an awful thing for citizens to know their rights. What were we all thinking?!?

I have to say, it sounds like it is you who truly hates this nation. You don't want to respect human rights, you don't want citizens to exercise their rights, you want to kick out anyone who doesn't agree with your views. You seem to think it's fine for the government to be as authoritarian as it wants to be, presumably in the name of freedom. That does not sound American at all.
 
Definition of torture, per the United Nations Torture Convention of 1984:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

There should be no doubt whatsoever that simulated drowning qualifies as a form of physical and/or mental suffering. I mean, really. How is it supposed to work, if not by inducing suffering?

Same goes for sleep deprivation, stress positions, deliberate humiliations, and so forth.

There is also no question that the purpose is obtaining information, confessions, and -- whether explicitly admitted or not -- punishment for alleged actions.

Bush 43 had a few willing lawyers who were willing to weasel their way around it. Their legal arguments are as unconvincing as Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

I know that and some other texts, where definitions of torture are given. There are some such that are closer to the experience of water boarding as prescribed for enhanced integration or special forces training.
You are of course right in believing that simulated drowning can probably be interpreted as extreme, if it is much more severe than the handbook treatment. But even that should be reviewed carefully, as it devalues the meaning, weight and dignity of the expression 'torture'. This is quite quickly clear, when one looks into real cases of torture, the physiological explanations, the forensics, the pictures and compares the material with the analysis of the procedures of enhanced interrogation. But either you know this or you aren't interested in knowing it.

So you argument is false. The question is why you make it.
 
He said something to the effect that he would employ methods that make waterboarding look tame.

I just listened to the passages, but must have missed that sentence.
 
So do many on the right -- there is no end to the bitching these days. Including from you, it seems. ;)



:roll:

We've been through this before.

These are HUMAN rights. The justification for due process and protection from cruel and unusual punishment itself is based on the idea that every person has those rights, no matter where or when they were born.

The "right to due process" does not stop at the US border; e.g. the CIA is not empowered to use torture if they operate a base in Canada; the FBI cannot raid a building in the UK without proper authorization and use the information in court.

Plus, a great deal of what's going on? It happened in territory under the control of the US, and by agents of the US government.

Your willingness to ditch critical human rights in the name of interrogation techniques that don't work in the first place is quite telling.



Yes, they do. We've been over this too. Your cherry-picking of the law is as outdated as your Bircherism.



If that is going to provide more accurate information? Yes. Without question.

I don't care if we have to give the suspect ice cream with sprinkles on top. All that matters is 1) getting the right information and 2) ensuring that their basic human rights are respected in the process.



Yes, it has. Without question, it has. Waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, all are torture. Plus, we deliberately sent suspects to nations like Egypt, knowing full well they would be tortured.

Just because a few lawyers in thrall to motivated reasoning don't think it's torture, doesn't mean it is not torture.



"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Sound familiar?

Human rights, universal rights, inherent rights. Slightly different names, same thing. Not that difficult to understand.



We've been over this too. Every human being is entitled to a basic set of rights -- including due process.

They may or may not have certain rights specified in the Geneva Convention. That does not mean that if you are captured on the battlefield without wearing a uniform, the capturing army can do whatever they want to you.



lol

Yes, I'm sure terrorists extensively study cognitive science



Uh huh

On one hand, we have actual research done by professional researchers.

On the other, we have a Bircher who professes to love America, yet does not understand human rights, has done zero research, and thinks that if it worked for Jack Bauer it should work in real life.

Which one is more persuasive? Hmmm.



Yes, it's truly an awful thing for citizens to know their rights. What were we all thinking?!?

I have to say, it sounds like it is you who truly hates this nation. You don't want to respect human rights, you don't want citizens to exercise their rights, you want to kick out anyone who doesn't agree with your views. You seem to think it's fine for the government to be as authoritarian as it wants to be, presumably in the name of freedom. That does not sound American at all.

You are pretending to know what you do not--your statements of the law are plainly false. If I feel like taking the time to prove that, I may quote what the Supreme Court has said about this subject.

The rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the U.S. do not apply to aliens outside U.S. territory--particularly not to unlawful enemy combatants being held outside U.S. territory. No amount of your prattling about human rights will make them enforceable in a U.S. court, nor will your mawkish attempt to cite the Declaration as authority.
 
Well, besides speaking like a ten years old and so being an embarrassment to the voters, he did not propose more severe "torture" than waterboarding. There he did not stipulate the degree of its use, so it remains unclear, what exactly he was asking for. If we assume it is as performed on US service people in some training courses ie like it was in the handbook on enhanced interrogation, it is, as he says, not very nice. Butit is also not torture, if torture is supposed to mean anything special. Altering our laws to be more precise on this would be helpful, as not so many schnooks could run around creating confusion with blatant populisms and propaganda.

He did say he'd support "far worse forms of torture."
 
He did say he'd support "far worse forms of torture."

Since I am not thinking of voting for the man, I do not think I will google the video again. It was obvious that like so many things he has never really thought them through.
 
Since I am not thinking of voting for the man, I do not think I will google the video again. It was obvious that like so many things he has never really thought them through.

Exactly.
Just like, as you said above, a ten year old. Are we ready to have a fourth grader in charge?
 
You are of course right in believing that simulated drowning can probably be interpreted as extreme, if it is much more severe than the handbook treatment.
Which handbook are you referring to? A specific version of the Army Field Manual?

Let's look at what the US has actually done:
• Rectal feeding (not based on medical need)
• Rectal rehydration (not based on medical need)
• Confinement to a box, to restrict movement
• Detainee was stripped, wrapped in plastic, and submerged in cold water
• Induced hypothermia (this killed Gul Rahman, an Afghan militant, in 2002)
• sleep deprivation
• auditory overload
• total isolation
• stripping and shackling detainees
• Waterboarding: "strapping the individual to a tilted board, with legs above their head, placing a cloth over their face, covering their nose and mouth. Water is then poured continuously over the cloth to prevent breathing, simulate drowning and induce panic... for 40 seconds," up to a dozen times a day (i.e. simulated drowning)
• beatings, such as "facial holds" and "insult slaps;" one detainee described getting his head banged into a pillar repeatedly
• slamming detainees into walls
• threats of sexual violence to detainees and their family members
How the CIA tortured its detainees | US news | The Guardian

To say this does not amount to torture is, to put it mildly, an abuse of semantics. There is little doubt that these are examples of inducing suffering in order to force the individual to confess and/or divulge information.

I mean, really. How else is this supposed to work? Do you think simulated drowning works because it's fun for the detainee?


But even that should be reviewed carefully, as it devalues the meaning, weight and dignity of the expression 'torture'.
So does ruling out a method of torture, basically only because it was used by the United States government.

There is also no dignity in torture.


This is quite quickly clear, when one looks into real cases of torture, the physiological explanations, the forensics, the pictures and compares the material with the analysis of the procedures of enhanced interrogation. But either you know this or you aren't interested in knowing it.
You mean like this?

Waterboarding the Brain – The Neural Effects of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques | Brain Blogger
https://metinbasoglu.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/waterboarding-is-severe-torture-research-findings/
https://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf

It also sounds like you, and other torture supporters, aren't interested in even a cursory look at the reams of data which indicate that torture doesn't work. And if you're still going to be fussy about the semantics: EIT doesn't work either.


So you argument is false. The question is why you make it.
Funny, that's what I'd like to ask you.
 
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