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Its only torture when the other side does it!
Phoenix-D
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The "enhanced interrogation" techniques the Bush administration likes to use? The ones they claim aren't torture? They're taught from a paper.
The paper's title?
“Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.â€
What was the paper's subject? Chinese torture methods during the Korean war. And how they were used to extract false confessions.. You know, the kind of thing the US government likes to go about in China's "repeated human rights violations".
After seeing those confessions, the military decided it needed to train its soldiers to deal with abuse by the enemy. When the military and CIA decided, gee golly, that looks like fun- they used the techniques in the same manual.
These are the methods that are supposed to keep us safe? Torturing people who may or may not have anything to do with anything until they admit they do and spit out false, useless information?
What. The. Flying. Fuck.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
The paper's title?
“Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.â€
What was the paper's subject? Chinese torture methods during the Korean war. And how they were used to extract false confessions.. You know, the kind of thing the US government likes to go about in China's "repeated human rights violations".
After seeing those confessions, the military decided it needed to train its soldiers to deal with abuse by the enemy. When the military and CIA decided, gee golly, that looks like fun- they used the techniques in the same manual.
These are the methods that are supposed to keep us safe? Torturing people who may or may not have anything to do with anything until they admit they do and spit out false, useless information?
What. The. Flying. Fuck.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
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In their defense, most people on the pro-side don't really get what waterboarding entails. I mean, "pouring water on someone's head until they confess" coupled with the repeated assertions that the victim is never in any danger (assuming it's done properly) of physical harm, and it honestly doesn't sound all that bad.
Now, the people who actually understand what it means and still support it... yeah, I dunno.
And they've done one better by restricting the debate to just waterboarding. They're outlaw that, act all high and mighty and outraged, and continue doing all the other terrible shit.
The dichotomy created where on the one hand this is "an enhanced interrogation technique" and on the other hand is "just like washing the faces of prisoners" is laughable. If this is such a supposedly tame technique, why is it so effective?
The basic problem is that this is not specifically defined as 'torture' according to US law. Pro-waterboarders have consistantly stated that no evidence exists that waterboarding causes lasting psychological damage - or at least no evidence they believe exists - and that in the controlled method used in waterboarding, there is no physical damage or danger of injury/death, and therefore does not qualify as "cruel and unusal". They demand congress specifically define waterboarding as torture before they'll cease to support it's use.
The question I've never gotten someone who supports the use of waterboarding on terrorists to answer is if they also support, or would not be outraged over claims of torture, if US soldiers were waterboarded by captors. I have a feeling most of them would be.
Yeah, my understanding of water boarding is that you get the same effect as holding someones face underwater repeatedly, except by pouring water on their face.
I've heard second hand that in some countries, Oman for example, if your in prison they basically feed you extremely poorly, forcing your friends/family to literally come feed you on a regular basis if they love you. That seems a little harsh to me, but I could see a form of that working.
I think an acceptable torture would be to leave someone in their small dark cell and feed them nothing but cold porridge with some multivitamins mashed into it. I don't see how any pro-active torture method, like water boarding or inflicting pain could be used without creating false confessions (also, um humanity?). If you treat your enemy like they are less then human, your only debasing yourself and perpetuating the conflict, creating more hate.
It's not effective
A lot of people have that same view of it.
What waterboarding actually is is rather more uncomfortable. You are strapped, face up, to an inclined board, with your head on the low end, and your feet on the high end.
Some sort of material is generally put over or in your mouth, usually a cloth hood, wadded cloth in your mouth, or sometimes a thin sheet of plastic. Water is then poured slowly onto your face or into your mouth. This generates a very realistic sense of drowning.
With the cloth hood/wadded cloth, some of the water enters your mouth but not all of it. When breathing in, some of the water would enter the lungs. Not much, and if done properly not nearly enough to kill, but more than enough to trigger your body's gag reflexes and drowning response. With the plastic/cellophane sheeting, it would still trigger the gag reflex, and the sensation of restricting breathing due to water is still there, and still evokes sensations of drowning.
Honestly I just don't know how people can support this sort of thing. We as a country can do better than this, better than treating anyone this way.
Allow me to clarify - why is it effective in getting confessions which may not be true? If it truly isn't effective, why do we use it, and protect it as a viable "enhanced" technique, instead of outright banning it?
It IS effective. CIA operatives have subjected themselves to water boarding. the average amount of time they last is a little over ten seconds or so.
Water-boarding creates a realistic feeling of drowning. And I'm not sure we're all on the same page here. There are several techniques of water boarding, and each them can quite easily cause lasting damage and death. Many people who experience it have lasting psychological effects. And thus, it is actually torture.
It gets false confessions out of people because it is such a terrifying experience and people will do anything to make it stop. There is an instance of a man who (due to water boarding) now has a fear of taking showers (just for example).
As for not banning; it works on the terrorists, why would it be banned here?
I honestly can't come up with a "good" reason why it hasn't been banned already, aside from the administration's desire to continue to do it to people.
The debate here is effectiveness versus decency. It works because it consistently produces. The only effect is a "solid" basis for prosecution (the false confession). That's why is hasn't been banned.
Who said there had to be a good reason?
Thus rendering it ineffective.
Using it to get a confession? No. Bad. If you torture someone long enough they'll tell you they shot fucking Duke Ferdinand, but that doesn't necessarily make it so.
That's not the point.
The discussion here is why it is not banned. The government that wants it legal does not necessarily care if the confession is false; they just care that there is one.
Compare waterboarding to putting someone in front of a firing squad but not telling them all the executioners are shooting blanks
How's it sound then?
The problem is, that you cannot actually debate with most pro-people simply because it does not come from a place of justification but a media-bred primal fear.
I was very liberal, but I can feel my gut as I get older pulling away from it towards the side of 'if they have information that could stop the people I love being hurt, so be it' whilst also condemnig the practices of the other side.
It is a horrible feeling. I stopped watching the news a while back when this feeling was at its strongest, but what little I do here does make me genuinely worried in a way I never used to be, not even after 9/11. So, its basically a case of 'be almost competely uninformed and thus a bit of an idiot' (my current state)
Or 'let the news bombard my senses until all my ideals of moral and immorality slip away into an 'us vs them' mentality'
It troubles me. Is there a third option?? I would like to feel informed without feeling like everyone around me is a paedophile/rapist/terrorist
That's a poor comparison; water boarding produces the experience of drowning and extreme pain.
TPM
Find a better source for information. The average American news program is not the best source for unbiased or "happy" news.
Sorry to sound facetious, but I was actually hoping for a suggestion of where to find these other sources of information
Quoted since the site is being slow:
I find it so despicable that my country would even consider doing this, or justify the use if it and yet condemn other countries for similar practices. Bunch of hypocrites in power. Would it be torture if our enemies did it to our soldiers or citizens? Of course it would.
If I hide myself wherever I go
Am I ever really there?
Yeah, a better example is setting up a mock firing squad, but they're all shooting blanks, but oh we've also attached wires to your brain such that when the guns go off you'll have all the sensations of having been shot in the stomach. It feels like you are dying in one of the most horrible manners possible. That's why it's effective. The part of your brain capable of rationale thought shuts down, and you will do literally anything to make it stop. You will sell your wife and children and dog up the river if it'll make the pain go away.
Conceptually, I can see certain situations where torture is morally justified - situations of the "nuke's about to go off in downtown Manhattan" variety. Fuck it, though, torture - including waterboarding - should be illegal. It should not be US policy, overtly or in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge manner. If some government agent really believes he needs to torture someone to save scores of people, he can do so, and he can get that information, and he can save those lives - and then we can prosecute him and punish him for breaking the law, because that is what needs to happen for us to keep being the good guys. We're the ones who don't fucking use torture.
I want us to be the good guys. And not just because we control the history books, but because we're actually the good guys.
Then what, pray tell, DOES?
That's a novel approach.
Oh wait, no it isn't.
Twice.
That's a relevant comment.
Oh wait, no it isn't.
As an individual? I agree, which I spelled out in my post. As a nation? I strongly disagree.
That logic can be very easily abused.
It can very often be said people were being tortured to protect innocent people. It just depends on perspective.
It's just a statement I've heard a lot before. Forgive me if I'm somewhat jaded on the subject.
Okay, I'll be a little more relevant then; can you elaborate on why and in what circumstances torture wouldn't 'disqualify one from good guy status'?
Edit: Sorry, I missed your post above. Also, I (mostly, sorta) agree with ElJeffe - I was still assuming the 'good guy' in the situation referred to a nation, not an individual.
So they didn't answer the question at all?
That video is terrifying.
That's a pretty tame account. If you search the Straight Dope Message Boards, a guy who's in peak physical condition and is an accomplished swimmer subjected himself to it. His description of it was a bit more... horrific.
Which video are you talking about?
Talking Points Memo.