Letters to the Editor
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The Ticking Bomb trick
The gambit is obvious: Every torture defender puts forward the ticking bomb situation.
The terrorist knows the location of the nuclear bomb, and the responsible government officer uses, as a matter of last resort, torture to sacrifice a live to save the life of many and protect all of us.
Once you accept this scenario, no matter how outlandish it is in reality, the justification of torture follows easily.
I would like to know where are the nuclear bombs, the WMDs that justify the actual use of torture that indeed has been going on for the last 50 years by or under the auspices of the US and the School of the Americas, only to become more flagrant over the last 7 years.
Cut the bullshit. America tortures. This country imported the technology from the masters, the Germans and the French, And has refined the art of torture to the ultimate levels of sophistication, has spread it, promoted and supervised it during the proxy regimes in Latin America and Asia.
If you guys can sleep at night knowing that your so called Freedom reign is based on such monstrosities, I pity you.
The road to humanity is hard and tortuous.
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1+1=?
Mukasey doesnt know if waterboarding is illegal but he does know that torture is illegal. He feels waterboarding is "repugnant", knows that the technique simulates drowning and that the military has banned it-- but still can't make the simple logical leap to classify it as torture!
Under normal circumstances I would question this guy's powers of deductive reasoning. But what I think we realy have is this case is just another example of a 'yes man' being appointed to cover this administration's very vunerable collective ass.
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Former Navy SEAL on Waterboarding
Clarity in the NY Daily News today:
NY Daily News
I know waterboarding is torture - because I did it myself
By MALCOLM NANCE
Wednesday, October 31st 2007, 4:00 AM
Last week, attorney general nominee Judge Michael Mukasey dodged the question of whether waterboarding terror suspects is necessarily torture. Americans can disagree as to whether or not this should disqualify him for the top job in the Justice Department. But they should be under no illusions about what waterboarding is.
As a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.
Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.
In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.
Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.
How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.
The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again. Call it "Chinese water torture," "the barrel," or "the waterfall." It is all the same.
One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American.
Is there a place for the waterboard? Yes. It must go back to the realm of training our operatives, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines - to prepare for its uncontrolled use by our future enemies. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of Americans may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name ofprotecting America.
Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured.
Our own missteps have already created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda's own virtual school for terrorists.
I agree with Sen. John McCain. Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.
Nance is a counterterrorism consultant for the government's special operations, homeland security and intelligence agencies. A longer version of this essay appeared on www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog.
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Nobody really is watching
Nobody is watching the weekly debates because the 2008 election has been over even before it has started. Hillary has a lock on it and she will not blow it like every other Dem candidate I can think of since, well, the other Clinton. I suppose there will be suspense leading up to HRC giving the nod to Bill Richardson as the VP. It's all very predictable as Hillary wants it to be. The repugs are in a real "mess" and they know it. These guys are basically idiots and an emabarrassment to themselves. No matter who they put up, they will lose by 20 points to HRC.