• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

'Waterboarding is torture,' says Obama

Boo Radley said:
You have not been through what those being tortured with have. Those who run SERE program, which I assume you speak of, state clearly that they are not doing the same thing.
Click to expand...

you have no idea what I have or have not been through.
 
OscarB63 said:
if waterboarding is clearly torture, then practically every action taken against any criminal anywhere could be considered to be "torture".

that's the problem. the hand-wringing, bed-wetting crowd has dumbed down the definition of "torture" to such a degree that almost anything qualifies.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. We have clearly defined waterbarding as torture in the past, and actually do so now. And we still do legal and just things to crimnals. You're merely ignoring the debate and trying to wein with nonsensical declarations.

The ad hominem isn't much better either.
 
Boo Radley said:
First, no one is feeling sorry for terrorist. I feel sorry for that innocent tax cab driver who was killed, or that fellow from Canada who had the misfortune to have the wrong last name. Rule of law protects the innocent. That is what makes it important.

Second, waterboarding is clearly torture. You not thinking it is largely means you don't really understand what it is.



Now, I understand someone not wanting to enter into the debate. It is an old one and I doubt many will change their minds, sadly. But when you do enter into it, expect a response.
Click to expand...


Boo...I respect your opinion and most times we agree...but to me torture has to cause harm...waterboarding causes discomfort and it ends precisely when the water is turned off and does no physical harm....I disagree that its torture in the true sense of the word..
Alot of how I feel and what I believe about it has to do with knowing everyone else would torture our people...and its even legal in most of the world...we need to start putting our people and our troops ahead of others....LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES....if they didnt attack us, if they werent carrying out a campaign to this day to kill our troops and attack our homeland...waterboarding wouldnt even be an issue
 
OscarB63 said:
I beg to differ. shoving bamboo slivers under someone's fingernails is torture. connecting a field generator to someone's genitals is torture. shoving a glass rod up someone's penis and hitting it with a hammer is torture. shoving boiling turkey eggs up someone's ass is torture. cutting someone with a razor and then pouring salt water or alcohol into the wounds is torture.
Click to expand...
Oddly enough the Bush Admin's legal team disagreed with you. They said that those things did not rise to the level of torture. That's the same opinion they used to justify waterboarding.
 
CedarBear said:
In a round-about way, my point was to refer to the monster wielding the knife that sliced Pearl's throat to the bone.
If we needed info from that animal, I would certainly agree to pouring water on his face.
Click to expand...
While I have no qualms about that person finding extreme discomfort and death, that's not exactly the main issue here. It's not about whether or not someone deserves such treatment so much as whether it's in our interests to do so.
The Nazis certainly had no qualms about inflicting extreme cruelty. You should look up their best interrogator and see what methods he used when he literally could have used anything imaginable in luding tortures that would make us all blanch. His name was Hanns Scharff.
It's really not about whether or not someone deserves torture.
 
lpast said:
...you want me to feel bad for terrorists or muslims that have information that could save american civilians lives and our troops...
Click to expand...
No desire for that. Not one whit.
 
OscarB63 said:
if waterboarding is clearly torture, then practically every action taken against any criminal anywhere could be considered to be "torture".
Click to expand...
This is untrue.

OscarB63 said:
the hand-wringing, bed-wetting crowd has dumbed down the definition of "torture" to such a degree that almost anything qualifies.
Click to expand...
This is also untrue.

There're some specific legal definitions that are widely available on the web if you're ever interested.
 
lpast said:
if they didnt attack us, if they werent carrying out a campaign to this day to kill our troops and attack our homeland...waterboarding wouldnt even be an issue
Click to expand...
If we had enough experienced interrogators, it wouldnt've been an issue either.
 
lpast said:
Boo...I respect your opinion and most times we agree...but to me torture has to cause harm...waterboarding causes discomfort and it ends precisely when the water is turned off and does no physical harm....I disagree that its torture in the true sense of the word..
Alot of how I feel and what I believe about it has to do with knowing everyone else would torture our people...and its even legal in most of the world...we need to start putting our people and our troops ahead of others....LIKE EVERYONE ELSE DOES....if they didnt attack us, if they werent carrying out a campaign to this day to kill our troops and attack our homeland...waterboarding wouldnt even be an issue
Click to expand...

It causes harm. A few years ago I read the CIA's view on it. They suggested stated clearly that these techniques, which include waterboarding, sleep deprevation, and what we saw done by us to detainees, last a life time, and are much more devastating than what you describe.

And as this torture is unrealiable, less effective than other methods, how exactly does using it mean we're putting our people first? in fact, the Military ahs argued us using them hurts our people, making it more liklely when we really do next fight a war against a country, that country can argue there is no need to follwo the rules with Americans as Americans have no concern for rule of law.

I think many have bought into a hypothethical that is really unrealisitc. We are never likely to have the rigth guy with the right information to stop a tacking time bomb, and torture wouldn't likely get us the right intel if we did. More likely, as we saw with al Libi, we'll have a guy who doesn't know squat, torture him and force him to tell us something, it'll be inaccurate becasue he really didn't know, but we'll use the information as we did with al Libi, and it will lead us down the wrong path.



BTW, I forgot to mention I also agree and respect your opinions most of the time. More accurately, your opinions most of the time; I respect you all the time. No issue here with me concerning you personally.
 
Last edited:
Simon W. Moon said:
This is untrue.

This is also untrue.

There're some specific legal definitions that are widely available on the web if you're ever interested.
Click to expand...

and just about every "punishment" ever given to anyone can be finessed to meet those legal definitions.

Torture is also prohibited under 18 U.S.C. § 2340. The definition of torture used is as follows:

"torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
Click to expand...

oops...looks like you got me ;). as long as it is lawfully sanctioned, you can inflict all the pain and suffering you want. :thumbs:
 
Boo Radley said:
It causes harm. A few years ago I read the CIA's view on it. They suggested stated clearly that these techniques, which include waterboarding, sleep deprevation, and what we saw done by us to detainees, last a life time, and are much more devastating than what you describe.

And as this torture is unrealiable, less effective than other methods, how exactly does using it mean we're putting our people first? in fact, the Military ahs argued us using them hurts our people, making it more liklely when we really do next fight a war against a country, that country can argue there is no need to follwo the rules with Americans as Americans have no concern for rule of law.

I think many have bought into a hypothethical that is really unrealisitc. We are never likely to have the rigth guy with the right information to stop a tacking time bomb, and torture wouldn't likely get us the right intel if we did. More likely, as we saw with al Libi, we'll have a guy who doesn't know squat, torture him and force him to tell us something, it'll be inaccurate becasue he really didn't know, but we'll use the information as we did with al Libi, and it will lead us down the wrong path.



BTW, I forgot to mention I also agree and respect your opinions most of the time. More accurately, your opinions most of the time; I respect you all the time. No issue here with me concerning you personally.
Click to expand...

Once again I ask, what other more effective methods are we not using?
 
Boo Radley said:
Why not? it's ineffective and immoral. We certainly have demonized other countries who have done it, and we don't want to give excuse for others to do so to our people. By excusing it, we make it acceptable not only for lawless terrorist, but other nations, who can simply point to us if we become involved in some conflict. Rule of law has a place. And protecting the innocnet should be of concern.



Of course.

The Gamble: General Petraeus and the ... - Thomas E. Ricks - Google Books

It would be clearer if you read the entire book.
Click to expand...

In a war, winning with as little loss of friendly lives as possible, is the only concern. There are no second place ribbons in war.
 
apdst said:
In a war, winning with as little loss of friendly lives as possible, is the only concern. There are no second place ribbons in war.
Click to expand...

Again, the evidence says torture is unrealibale and not the best way to get information. becasue of this, why would you link using it to winning or saving lives? Like I have said, there is a lot of mispercptions here.
 
apdst said:
The UN thinks global warming is real, too.
Click to expand...


funny how the UN thinks waterboarding is torture but is perfectly fine with its "peacekeepers" committing rape and running underage prostitution rings.

crap like that doesn't inspire much confidence in the UN's judgement on what is or is not "torture"
 
OscarB63 said:
if waterboarding is clearly torture, then practically every action taken against any criminal anywhere could be considered to be "torture".

that's the problem. the hand-wringing, bed-wetting crowd has dumbed down the definition of "torture" to such a degree that almost anything qualifies.
Click to expand...

The hand-wringers consider barking cogs, non-climate controlled prison cells and sleep deprivation to be torture.
 
cookies give you more intel then torture. I'll talk if they gave me cookies or give me a option between the two. The again, im a cookie whore.
 
Boo Radley said:
Again, the evidence says torture is unrealibale and not the best way to get information. becasue of this, why would you link using it to winning or saving lives? Like I have said, there is a lot of mispercptions here.
Click to expand...

There is no evidence that it's unrealiable. Quite the contrary.

Every single prisoner that served at the Hanoi Hilton signed a confession admitting to comitting war crimes against the North Vietnamese, so don't insult our intelligence by saying that torture doesn't work.

Even better, actually do some homework in the subject.
 
apdst said:
There is no evidence that it's unrealiable. Quite the contrary.

Every single prisoner that served at the Hanoi Hilton signed a confession admitting to comitting war crimes against the North Vietnamese, so don't insult our intelligence by saying that torture doesn't work.
Even better, actually do some homework in the subject.
Click to expand...

actually, apdst, you should probably take your own advice. torture causes a person to say whatever they think you want to hear, hence the signing of the confessions you mentioned, thanks for posting that! too funny.
 
jambalaya said:
Once again I ask, what other more effective methods are we not using?
Click to expand...

There are books on it. And they are better than what we can link here, but a few links for you:

Moreover, Zimbardo told LiveScience that torture is not an effective way to gather intelligence. Compared with police settings, in which detectives build social rapport and often get confessions without physical force, secret interrogation squads can alienate prisoners and elicit unreliable information, he said.

(For example, a Libyan detainee linked to al-Qaida falsely revealed under torture that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a key reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Allen said.)

Study: U.S. Torture Techniques Unethical, Ineffective | LiveScience

What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington's confidential Pentagon report, which he won't discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be "making gratuitous enemies" and that prisoner abuse "is counterproductive to the Coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry." Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of "special methods" might help explain why the war is going so badly.
The Torture Myth (washingtonpost.com)

Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out in Time that:

When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.

He isn't alone in this assessment – a number of former intelligence people have expressed similar views, and his words are echoed by the US Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:

…the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

The situation is further clouded by the fact that members of the George W. Bush administration made claims for the effectiveness of torture that have later been proven to be untrue. One such claim was that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles in 2002. Slight problem - in 2002 Shaikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.

But enough anecdotes, let's look at the science. Why wouldn't torture be effective? Actually there are many reasons. Let's assume that we have the right guy, and that he does in fact know the information that we need. All we need to do is beat it out of him, right?

Well, no. Suppose I start beating you around the head, demanding that you tell me that Justin Bieber is in fact a supremely talented artist. Eventually, although it may take several days of torture to get there, you'll tell me what I want to hear, but that doesn't make it true.

Does torture work? | Science | guardian.co.uk

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

(snip)

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.

Page 2: CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described - ABC News

There's no quick fix or silver bullet to avoid good old fashion work.




Also, go back and read stillballin75's post. He addresses this rather well.
 
apdst said:
There is no evidence that it's unrealiable. Quite the contrary.

Every single prisoner that served at the Hanoi Hilton signed a confession admitting to comitting war crimes against the North Vietnamese, so don't insult our intelligence by saying that torture doesn't work.

Even better, actually do some homework in the subject.
Click to expand...

yes, it is effective at getting confessions. As you point out, even the innocent will confess.

That, however, is not information gathering. I suggest you not only do some homework, but read and understand what I have said.

:coffeepap
 
OscarB63 said:
funny how the UN thinks waterboarding is torture but is perfectly fine with its "peacekeepers" committing rape and running underage prostitution rings.

crap like that doesn't inspire much confidence in the UN's judgement on what is or is not "torture"
Click to expand...

Who has arguing rape is perfectly fine?

BTW, we signed those agreements with the UN. We, the US, have called waterboarding torture long before Bush was president.
 
liblady said:
actually, apdst, you should probably take your own advice. torture causes a person to say whatever they think you want to hear,
Click to expand...
I'll ask again: Do you think that a hardcore terrorist is going to think to himself, "gee, they've been so nice to me, that I'm going to tell them everything I know"?

Tell us what you think.

hence the signing of the confessions you mentioned, thanks for posting that! too funny.
Click to expand...

Right and signing those confessions equates to treason against the United States. Are you saying that you would voluntarily commit treason, or would they have to make you do it?

I seriously doubt you can relate, but would you endager the lives of the other members of your military unit, without being tortured first? Or, are you going to keep the information to yourself, until they beat it out of you?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom