Is waterboarding torture?

[aaron_everette]

Better living through chemistry, sugar, in other words: D-R-U-G-S. There's TONS of shit that disconnect your conscious from your subconscious mind and the worst side effect is a headache afterwards.

Physical torture is wrong, there is no justification or excuse for it. All it succeeds in doing is fueling the other guy's anger. For every life that may or may not be saved with that information, tens or hundreds more are endangered by the hatred that torture fuels. Torture is not committed in a vaccuum. All waterboarding is doing is making us hated by the world at large, and the Moslem community in particular. It turns Americans into monsters.

Using torture on prisoners doesn't end the war faster, if anything it perpetuates it. We should treat the prisoners the way we want our people treated if they are captured.

I agree that chemistry would be the best way. They would be able to obtain creditable information a lot faster this way. If these methods are available then why aren't they being practiced?

 

[binö]

does that truth serum chemical reall work? i forget the chem name
that seems nicer than waterboarding

 

[jnevin]

I don't think it's torture any more than scaring someone with excessive charges being filed and using that to scare them.

 

[musclemom]

I agree that chemistry would be the best way. They would be able to obtain creditable information a lot faster this way. If these methods are available then why aren't they being practiced?

I would actually like to know the answer to that question myself. The most LOGICAL reason, IMO, is that they actually DO use that method, and the prisoners are telling them the truth, but the truth isn't what they want to hear or what they think the prisoner should know, so they resort to more barbaric methods, and the prisoner, conscious, agrees with whatever they want to hear under torture.

There's a very old axiom, the truth isn't half as exciting as fiction.

Look, you know how many people confessed to heresy/witchcraft/consorting with the devil under torture? The TRUTH was these poor farm folk knew about as much witchcraft as I know nuclear science. But they told their inquisitors that, and nobody believed them. When they were finally so broken they said, yes, they'd fucked the devil, the torture stopped. Same shit. The truth is boring and most people who are willing to resort to torture aren't intelligent enough to realize this basic fact.

 

[nimbus]

If you have the "whatever it is" to strap a bomb to a 5-year old and tell that little kid to go run into a crowd then push the button on the bomb, you will say ANYTHING while you're getting dunked.

Torture only makes the people doing the torture happy. As a means to effectively gather information, it's useless, particularly when used against spiritual FANATICS.

This is not like the average person who isn't indoctrinated in a concept. These nuts live and breath their beliefs. Fanatics are not right in the head. What do you have to lose if you believe that by doing what your religious/spiritual brothers advise you to say/do you will go to heaven for eternity? What's a little physical suffering in THIS plane versus eternal bliss?

And when it comes to torture the CIA are amateurs. A little pressing under a half ton or so, a little breaking on the wheel, explode a few fingers with thumb screws, dislocate shoulders via strappado, now we're getting somewhere. Dig out an iron maiden from some museum's basement, warm up one of those nice toture chairs and invite them to have a seat ...

Applaude torture and you're only ONE step away from hoping to see someone crucified for their crimes. By now people should know better. It's not effective, and in the end it's every bit as evil as the crimes you're accusing your enemy of.

you're dead wrong about waterboarding; the objective isn't revenge or sadism. The cia wouldn't waterboard if it didn't serve a strategic benefit. why waste time, money, and effort?

you don't know shit about what is effective and what isn't, because you aren't in the CIA. you;re also a shitty citizen if you don't believe in using intense interrogation methods to protect your countrymen from foreign threats.

obviously truth drugs would be ideal but those must not be a mature technology yet or else we'd be using them exclusively. The notion that you have of the government missing out on valuable intel. by sitting on truth chemicals because they'd rather inflict suffering is completely laughable

 

[binö]

I don't think it's torture any more than scaring someone with excessive charges being filed and using that to scare them.

good point.
imagine facing 30yrs while you sit in a county jail with no bail as you await trial.
you could mentally detoriate, i think that could cause permantent mental problems...
i'd proly take waterboarding over that

 

[jnevin]

you're dead wrong about waterboarding; the objective isn't revenge or sadism. The cia wouldn't waterboard if it didn't serve a strategic benefit. why waste time, money, and effort?

you don't know shit about what is effective and what isn't, because you aren't in the CIA. you;re also a shitty citizen if you don't believe in using intense interrogation methods to protect your countrymen from foreign threats.

obviously truth drugs would be ideal but those must not be a mature technology yet or else we'd be using them exclusively. The notion that you have of the government missing out on valuable intel. by sitting on truth chemicals because they'd rather inflict suffering is completely laughable

Not to mention, they use waterboarding to train some of our elite troops. I doubt they's subject SEALs and the like to it as part of training if it were that harmful.

 

[musclemom]

you're dead wrong about waterboarding; the objective isn't revenge or sadism. The cia wouldn't waterboard if it didn't serve a strategic benefit. why waste time, money, and effort?

you don't know shit about what is effective and what isn't, because you aren't in the CIA. you;re also a shitty citizen if you don't believe in using intense interrogation methods to protect your countrymen from foreign threats.

obviously truth drugs would be ideal but those must not be a mature technology yet or else we'd be using them exclusively. The notion that you have of the government missing out on valuable intel. by sitting on truth chemicals because they'd rather inflict suffering is completely laughable

Pffffft. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

 

[jnevin]

Pffffft. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

So?

 

[nimbus]

Pffffft. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

that wasn;t the CIA