Do you support torture?

[Gunny]

You know what Gunny If thats your attitude and you SAY others are Fighting for me. I say their Fired. Don't claim your doing it for my benefit. If you CLAIM to work for the people, we've got EVERY right to Criticize and comment or Praise what goes on and how its done. Come home from the field and take a job doing something else if they don't understand that. Don't risk your life for an ideal you don't really believe in. Or a standard you feel you can't keep.

Another argument that is a loss on your part.

Where's the praise? I don't hear any from you weaklings, and don't presume I fight for you nor your freedom.

I risk my life for an ideal. I don't risk it for those who have no idea what that ideal is because they're so caught up in unrealistic BS it's pathetic.

I have 2 daughters and grandduaghter I prefer they not suffer the fate you relegate them to.

[revelarts]

Another argument that is a loss on your part.

Where's the praise? I don't hear any from you weaklings, and don't presume I fight for you nor your freedom.

I risk my life for an ideal. I don't risk it for those who have no idea what that ideal is because they're so caught up in unrealistic BS it's pathetic.

I have 2 daughters and grandduaghter I prefer they not suffer the fate you relegate them to.

You hear the praise every time I've quoted a military person that you dismiss.

May God bless your family Gunny and Whatever you personal ideals are you've got every right to fight for them. But not wearing a uniform that represents all of us whose ideals it stands for.

[jimnyc]

Rev - I notice that you skipped right over the part where I corrected your statements about waterboarding. Why do you search for information that backs up your beliefs and not the truth?

[revelarts]

( I wish I had a nickel for every time someone ignored a point I've made)
Ok Jim,

Notable statements are that the "The inidividual does not breathe any water into his lungs" and "…it is likely that this procedure would not last more than 20 minutes in any one application."
Now let’s look at the Bradbury Memo from May 30, 2005. Here is a passage from page 15:

Note that now we can have people on the board for up to two hours, with up to six applications of water on five days over a 30 day period. How did they go from 20 minutes to two hours and come up with such arbitrary numbers for the number of times a person can be waterboarded? Does torture occur only once these thresholds are exceeded?

Now let’s look at page 31:

This is full evidence that the CIA medical staff knew that waterboarding is actually drowning, not simulated drowning: "With the waterboard, the interrogators use potable saline rather than plain water so that detainees will not suffer from hyponatremia and to minimize the risk of pneumonia." Pneumonia is only a risk if the water is getting into the lungs. This is an admission that water is getting into the lungs. That is drowning. This is also in direct contradiction to the statement in the Bybee memo that water does not enter the lungs.
Here is MayoClinic.com on hyponatremia:
Hyponatremia occurs when the sodium in your blood is diluted by excess water. Hyponatremia may result from medical conditions that impair excretion of water from your body, or by a significant increase in water consumption, such as by athletes competing in marathons and other high-endurance events.
Relying on saline to prevent hyponatremia shows that the prisoners also were swallowing very large amounts of water while being waterboarded. That has not been discussed much in the descriptions I have seen coming from the government previously.

But I'll give you a Firm Maybe on the lungs, its sounds like MANY times it does and few times it doesn't. But it's strange that you believe the Lawyers Bybees description, and not the NAVY SERE trainer who'se DONE it and experienced it. HOWEVER people are suffocating. It's no simulation. ANd they can die, the fear is not of imagined possibility of dying it is clinically real. Literally moments away. THAT Qualifies as torture.

Putting a pillow on Grandmas face so she'll tell you where the car keys are is what, coercion?

"The United States military justice system has prosecuted "waterboarding" as a form of torture since the Spanish-American war. " An article by a former JAG who says "The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years."

SERE Trainer Nance Again
"SERE trained tens of thousands of service members of its historical use by the Nazis, the Japanese, North Korea, Iraq, the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge and the North Vietnamese.
SERE emphasized that enemies of democracy and rule of law often ignore human rights, defy the Geneva Convention and have subjected our men and women to grievous physical and psychological harm. We stress that enduring these calumnies will allow our soldiers to return home with honor.
The SERE community was designed over 50 years ago to show that, as a torture instrument, waterboarding is a terrifying, painful and humiliating tool that leaves no physical scars and which can be repeatedly used as an intimidation tool.
Waterboarding has the ability to make the subject answer any question with the truth, a half-truth or outright lie in order to stop the procedure. Subjects usually resort to all three, often in rapid sequence. Most media representations or recreations of the waterboarding are inaccurate, amateurish and dangerous improvisations, which do not capture the true intensity of the act. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not a simulation of drowning -- it is drowning."


Gunny your definition starts in the wrong place. When a soldier attacks a ship in battle and all of the enemy drown that warfare, when a soldier slowly drowns (or inflicts pain unnecessary pain on) a prisoner that's torture and abuse.

[Gaffer]

revelarts: Gunny your definition starts in the wrong place. When a soldier attacks a ship in battle and all of the enemy drown that warfare, when a soldier slowly drowns (or inflicts pain unnecessary pain on) a prisoner that's torture and abuse

It's torture and abuse if he's doing it for pleasure or revenge. Getting information makes it a necessary tool.

Lets also throw in the fact that the guy your questioning likes to torture people and has many friends who also like to torture people. He has information on where they are. What methods are you going to use to get that info out of him?

[revelarts]

It's torture and abuse if he's doing it for pleasure or revenge. Getting information makes it a necessary tool.

Lets also throw in the fact that the guy your questioning likes to torture people and has many friends who also like to torture people. He has information on where they are. What methods are you going to use to get that info out of him?

2007
TORTURE AND THE CRUEL, INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT OF DETAINEES: THE EFFECTIVENESS AND CONSEQUENCES OF `ENHANCED' INTERROGATION.

Steven Kleinman, Colonel, USAFR, Intelligence and National Security Specialist, Senior Intelligence Officer/Military Interrogator. .... He was an interrogator and case officer during Operation Just Cause, as the chief of a joint combined interrogation team during Operation Desert Storm, and served as a senior adviser on interrogation to the commander of a special operations task force during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He currently holds the rank of colonel, as the reserve senior intelligence officer at the Air Force Special Operations Command.


Congressman Nadler: "Okay, let me ask you a question, and I need you to set aside for a minute any moral or legal concerns and also any other limits that might be imposed by the Army Field Manual. If you were in a position where you knew with absolute certainty that no one would ever know what you had done, and you knew that the intelligence you needed to get was of urgent value, is there anything that you would, could or should do that would go beyond what is permitted in the Army Field Manual?"

Colonel Kleinman" Absolutely not, sir. Absolutely not. The wonderful point we are in--and I would like to try to expand on that, if I may--moral, legal and operational confluence all ends in one very narrow circle. And that is, what we need to do to adhere to legal concerns, what we need to do as a Nation that would be morally correct, and what I would need to do as an operator all falls in that same circle.
There is not an approach, there is not a strategy, there is not a treatment that would even come close to violating Geneva Convention guidelines, or the Constitution of the United States, and certainly not the field manual on interrogation. We talk about rapport, but rapport is a very inexact term. There is a lot more to it. But, fundamentally, to answer your question directly, I would not need to do anything that would be prohibited by the field manual and still be very, very effective."

[Gaffer]

Col Klienman covered his ass and danced effortlessly around the question. which is not the question I asked.

What methods would you use to get the info? Would you like me to make it multiple choice?

[fj1200]

Really. Just I asked rev and got no answer, I'll ask you a like question:

How do you define "barbaric actions"? That starts at beating up your little brother and taking his toy and moves from there.

We won't have to worry about any morals if we aren't free to have them. You won't be free to have them if you are not willing to use whatever means necessary to defeat those that would take them away.

As long as there are barbaric aggressors, the use of barbaric force to combat them will be justified.

First of all you assume I have the same feeling as Rev on the issue, I was merely pointing out that a position based on morality/ethics is necessarily going to be one-sided because "sin" is "sin." Having said that I do find myself moving toward his position on the torture issue. Barbaric actions are like pornography, you know it when you see it as well as the definition changing over time.

You also assume that we must counter barbarism with barbarism to remain free; I don't buy into the argument that that is the only thing keeping Islamofascism at bay.

I'm sure the rest of the world will understand that we used enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorists that can be counted on one hand - and according to the CIA, part of that information lead to the capture/killing of the most wanted man ever on our planet.

On a side note - why is it that so many jump up and down that the US shouldn't be the one who consistently helps other countries or engages other countries, that we should worry about our own country. But then in the next sentence we should worry about what the rest of the world thinks of us?

Is giving up our ethics worth it to kill OBL?

[jimnyc]

But I'll give you a Firm Maybe on the lungs, its sounds like MANY times it does and few times it doesn't. But it's strange that you believe the Lawyers Bybees description, and not the NAVY SERE trainer who'se DONE it and experienced it. HOWEVER people are suffocating. It's no simulation. ANd they can die, the fear is not of imagined possibility of dying it is clinically real. Literally moments away. THAT Qualifies as torture.

Putting a pillow on Grandmas face so she'll tell you where the car keys are is what, coercion?

You pick what you want to hear from various sources. The bottom line is that NO water enters the lungs if the actions outlined and appropriate training is followed. If anything, you showed that the interrogators might even take EXTRA precautionary actions to ensure it cannot happen. If it was "barbaric" or "torture" - why not just jam a garden hose down their throats for a minute at a clip? There's reasons they are trained to do it in such a controlled manner.

And you may want to use lame analogies to try and make your point - but these are known terrorists this technique is being done to, and more than just the Bush administration and Panetta have stated it yielded results. These cockroaches are far from being grandma.

[jimnyc]

Is giving up our ethics worth it to kill OBL?

I don't believe we've done so, that's your opinion.

[jimnyc]

Someone answer me this:

We have terrorists in jails. We have murderers in jail. Terrorists are kept in isolation. US prisons hold many murderers in isolation.

We waterboarded a very small handful of terrorists to gain valuable information. These terrorists have since walked away from their "torture".

We have since KILLED many, many murders that were in US prisons.

So it's wrong to "torture" foreign terrorists, but not a problem to kill people?

[fj1200]

I don't believe we've done so, that's your opinion.

That's your opinion. Some do.

[fj1200]

We have since KILLED many, many murders that were in US prisons.

They were tried and convicted.

So it's wrong to "torture" foreign terrorists, but not a problem to kill people?

The ones in jail? Have they been tried and convicted?

[jimnyc]

They were tried and convicted.



The ones in jail? Have they been tried and convicted?

Ok, fine - use the example of US troops killing foreign terrorists. Our troops have killed many of them using sniper rifles and/or apache helicopters, and many were killed when not a US troop was in sight. They were just known terrorists in a gathering.

Or the very terrorists that have been waterboarded. Not a word would have ever been said had they just been shot. We've killed many, many terrorists over the years even with drone attacks. None of these "men" received a trial and none convicted.

Are you now going to stand up for them too? Or is it ok to kill a terrorist but just not ok to pour water on him?

[jimnyc]

They were tried and convicted.



The ones in jail? Have they been tried and convicted?

And using your argument again... If we "tried and convicted" a terrorist, but we are extremely confident he has knowledge regarding an impending terror attack - is it now ok to waterboard him since he received his day in court? We know he can now be killed since he was sentenced to death - but it's not ok to waterboard him?