Quote:
Originally Posted by computerworks
Of course, water-boarding is torture... it's just Cheney-speak to call it an "enhanced interrogation technique." That's like calling a car crash an "unanticipated sheetmetal redeployment."
And, of course, it is a crime.
And, no...no one should be charged with a crime. They did what they thought was best for the country, with bipartisan concurrance. Too bad if it was torture.
Don't start a war with us if you can't take the repercussions.
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Actually, if it's a crime in the time of war,
we need to go way back.....
"On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk."
The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still
not causing permanent injury.""
Also....
"A CIA interrogation training manual declassified 12 years ago, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation -- July 1963," outlined a procedure similar to waterboarding. Subjects were suspended in tanks of water wearing blackout masks that allowed for breathing. Within hours, the subjects felt tension and so-called environmental anxiety. "Providing relief for growing discomfort, the questioner assumes a benevolent role," the manual states.
The KUBARK manual was the product of more than a decade of research and testing, refining lessons learned from the Korean War, where U.S. airmen were subjected to a new type of "touchless torture" until they confessed to a bogus plan to use biological weapons against the North Koreans."
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The real question is:
If someone you loved could die if you didn't take all reasonable steps to secure information from a person that knowingly had information that would save your loved one, would you use coercive interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding to secure the information?
I believe that everyone posting here would use whatever techniques available, possible some that are way over the line. Waterboarding isn't over the line in the time of war.
The problem is that politicians want to talk about this subject - what's done in the time of war should be up to the POTUS with input to Congress at the highest levels. That was done, we've been safe for years......