Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

[HenryReardon]

When the war is immoral, and the leaders more so, we should oppose it with every breath we have.

By voting them out of office at the first opportunity.

Iraq (if that's the war to which you're referring) was not immoral, but that's beside the point.

When US Soldiers are engaged in a war overseas, it is our duty to show our support. And, liberal slogans to the contrary, you cannot support the troops without supporting the activity in which they are engaged. If you think it can be done, you are fooling yourself.

People, especially politicians, who publicly protest an ongoing war put our men and women in harms way needlessly by encouraging the enemy.

John Kerry and John Murtha, for example, have a lot of blood on their hands.

 

[White Eagle]

Henry, at this point I have to say that you are just plain full of shit.

My view of the terrorists is that once they're convicted and we've gotten useful information out of them by civilized and effective means, they ought to be executed by near-hanging followed by a firing squad, with one bullet for each probable and/or intended victim -- starting at the toes. If we had the mental technology, I'd make them experience one terrifying death for each victim, only to come back and realize that they're not dead... but knowing that they're going to experience another death, and another, and another, until we finally actually let them die.
If they were fortunate, and not exceptionally evil, on a good day I might settle for having them executed by beheading in a public square, using an axe polished with pork fat.

But I am opposed to torture, opposed to Gitmo, opposed to being a nation that stands for "liberty and justice for all those our leaders haven't decided to call terrorists without proof".

Have you seen in the news lately the guy had 90 someodd nails from a highpowered nail gun in his head? They let him die, of course.

 

[Kulindahr]

Iraq (if that's the war to which you're referring) was not immoral, but that's beside the point.

When US Soldiers are engaged in a war overseas, it is our duty to show our support. And, liberal slogans to the contrary, you cannot support the troops without supporting the activity in which they are engaged. If you think it can be done, you are fooling yourself.

People, especially politicians, who publicly protest an ongoing war put our men and women in harms way needlessly by encouraging the enemy.

John Kerry and John Murtha, for example, have a lot of blood on their hands.

Invading another country which has done you no harm is immoral -- you may as well plead the morality of murder.

Again, you offer logic that means that the German people should have rallied around the Wermacht and supported the blitzkrieg in Poland. I'm a little puzzled over whether the Hungarian people should have cheered the Russian tanks, though -- I mean, really, the Russians were their de facto government.

People, especially politicians, who fail to protest the immoral use of power -- and whatever your fantasy, the military adventure in Iraq was immoral -- are delinquent in their duty.

America is not about power, as you seem to think; it is not about single-mindedness; it is not about slavering obedience to the notions of whoever sits at the center of power: it is about freedom.

As for "encouraging the enemy", that's exactly what our manipulative interference in the Middle East has done: we continue to encourage them by incitement to violence. The imperialist policies you support belong to an age we should be beyond; they are the politics of bullies -- the same as our enemies. By engaging in them, we declare to the world that the basic rule in the world remains "might makes right" -- and thus encourage all the foreign powers who wish to grow by pursuing violence against their neighbors. That includes Iran, North Korea, Putin's Russia, and others.

 

[TX-Beau]

If the guy can be waterboarded over 180 times and not be injured, sorry...not torture.

The Geneva Conventions surely prohibit this method as torture and as a form of cruel or degrading treatment. The ICCPR and CAT also forbid water boarding because it inflicts severe mental suffering, as does the UCMJ and federal criminal law.

http://www.slate.com/features/whati....com/features/whatistorture/WaterBoarding.htm

Yeah it's just the Fed the Army the Air Force the Navy, the Marines and the Geneva Convention that disagree with you.

Not even Cheney is making that argument.

Tell us all, if it's not torture, why do we have a history of prosecuting people for war crimes for doing it?

 

[HenryReardon]

Invading another country which has done you no harm is immoral -- you may as well plead the morality of murder.

.

Nice twisted anti-war thinking.

In an earlier post did you not agree that the UN Resolutions collectively authorized taking out Saddam? Can't have it both ways.

 

[jackoroe]

http://www.slate.com/features/whati....com/features/whatistorture/WaterBoarding.htm

Yeah it's just the Fed the Army the Air Force the Navy, the Marines and the Geneva Convention that disagree with you.

Not even Cheney is making that argument.

Tell us all, if it's not torture, why do we have a history of prosecuting people for war crimes for doing it?

Again, you make the argument that it's a violation of law. If that's the case, please cite for us, the judicial procedure that has found anybody guilty of anything as it relates to torture by the US at Gitmo.

If your making the argument that our guys are guilty of torture, you'll have to forgive me if I don't simply accept you at your word. The allegations have been out there for years, yet no court has made the call.

 

[TX-Beau]

Physical, Psychological, or Other Effects: Severe mental suffering; no physical effects unless the tactic results in suffocation.

Nnnnnnot torture.

So you made this assessment through your vast knowledge and expertise in the field?

LOL, you know if you stick your fingers in your ears and sing really loudly you won't have to hear anything at all.

 

[TX-Beau]

Again, you make the argument that it's a violation of law. If that's the case, please cite for us, the judicial procedure that has found anybody guilty of anything as it relates to torture by the US at Gitmo.

If your making the argument that our guys are guilty of torture, you'll have to forgive me if I don't simply accept you at your word. The allegations have been out there for years, yet no court has made the call.

Why on earth are you narrowing the scope of your question solely to gitmo? Dishonesty that's why.

No court has had a chance to prosecute over gitmo, and I believe there were convictions over Abu Gharib, where the soldiers - our guys - were hung out to dry by the same fuckers who ordered them to do what they did.

 

[TX-Beau]

I wonder how many of the pro-torture JUBbers would voluntarily submit to the procedure?

None of them obviously, and they'd be screaming torture and prosecution for war crimes at the top of their lungs if some other country did that to our soldiers.

 

[Kulindahr]

Physical, Psychological, or Other Effects: Severe mental suffering; no physical effects unless the tactic results in suffocation.

Nnnnnnot torture.

"No physical effects"?

That's a euphemism for "leaves no lasting bodily disfigurations -- so we can get away with it".

Waterboarding produces all kinds of physical effects -- let someone hold you underwater for two minutes, and you'll realize that! Your heart rate changes, you get muscle spasms from inability to breathe, your blood chemistry alters, headaches ensue....

By the guideline you invoke, beating someone senseless so long as there aren't lasting bruises isn't torture!

 

[Kulindahr]

Nice twisted anti-war thinking.

In an earlier post did you not agree that the UN Resolutions collectively authorized taking out Saddam? Can't have it both ways.

They authorized it if he didn't comply.
He offered to Bush to comply... in spades.

Bush invaded anyway.

 

[Kulindahr]

Again, you make the argument that it's a violation of law. If that's the case, please cite for us, the judicial procedure that has found anybody guilty of anything as it relates to torture by the US at Gitmo.

If your making the argument that our guys are guilty of torture, you'll have to forgive me if I don't simply accept you at your word. The allegations have been out there for years, yet no court has made the call.

As a mod, I would expect you'd actually read the threads you post in... maybe not?

Courts have made the call; it's been posted here -- people have been convicted of war crimes for the very things we're now doing.

 

[Kulindahr]

I wonder how many of the pro-torture JUBbers would voluntarily submit to the procedure?

If they did, you think any would be able to do that fifteen-second bet?

 

[TX-Beau]

Courts have made the call; it's been posted here -- people have been convicted of war crimes for the very things we're now doing.

Ahh but Kuli he carefully limited the scope of his question to Gitmo. Thinking I suppose that this means none of the related convictions, in the Bush admin, or in previous wars, somehow are no longer relevant. It's rank intellectual dishonesty.

The fact that the question is structured that way, screams that he knows that in the wider scope of this argument, he has no leg to stand on.

 

[Kulindahr]

Ahh but Kuli he carefully limited the scope of his question to Gitmo. Thinking I suppose that this means none of the related convictions, in the Bush admin, or in previous wars, somehow are no longer relevant. It's rank intellectual dishonesty.

The fact that the question is structured that way, screams that he knows that in the wider scope of this argument, he has no leg to stand on.

The tactic is kinda like saying that police kicking someone already cuffed and on the ground is legal because the specific case hasn't been brought to trial yet -- even though every previous case on the books has resulted in the same guilty judgment.

 

[TX-Beau]

The tactic is kinda like saying that police kicking someone already cuffed and on the ground is legal because the specific case hasn't been brought to trial yet -- even though every previous case on the books has resulted in the same guilty judgment.

That's exactly what he's arguing.

 

[TX-Beau]

I would have thought it was a no-brainer: with water-torture, you're doing something physical to a person to force a confession.

How obvious could it be?

Conservatives shackled themselves to Cheney/Bush, and got lied to, and taken for a ride. Honest conservatives recognize this - conservatives who think, and actually believe in the liberty they worship so, but there are some, for whom it seems admitting that they got duped is too painful, and they will and do defend anything at all even up to torture.

The question he didn't answer from upthread, was whether or not he believed in the rule of law. If you do, definitions of torture are moot, because this is illegal, was illegal, and our own government has prosecuted it as a war crime.

Either we have rule of law, and we abide by it, or we don't, and the government get's to do whatever it wants.

 

[HenryReardon]

They authorized it if he didn't comply.
He offered to Bush to comply... in spades.

After 12 years, he had zero credibility.

 

[Glafna]

Nice twisted anti-war thinking.

In an earlier post did you not agree that the UN Resolutions collectively authorized taking out Saddam? Can't have it both ways.

Henry.. you ARE aware of who you were replying too.... right???

 

[jackoroe]

As a mod, I would expect you'd actually read the threads you post in... maybe not?

Courts have made the call; it's been posted here -- people have been convicted of war crimes for the very things we're now doing.

Yeah, I do read the threads. And I still haven't read a decision, by a competent court of law, having decided that any of our people tortured anybody. We've been aware about these issues for years. Yet, mysteriously no complaint of torture by our people has been adjudicated. No decision by the World Court, no decision by SCOTUS, no decision by anybody of any consequence whatsoever. Just the peanut gallery here at JUB.

I don't much care about what anybody may or may not have been convicted of previously, let's deal with here and now. Especially since Obama and company doesn't appear likely to bring any charges anytime soon.

It's time to put up or shut up.