Is it torture? Is it acceptable?
What's Your Opinion of Waterboarding?
by minimus 112 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
mrsjones5
It's torture and not acceptable
-
Finally-Free
Water bores me. That's why I never go to beaches.
W
-
ninja
better than golden showers though
-
SixofNine
Torture, unacceptable for both moral and practical reasons.
-
SixofNine
(snip)
In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".
The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.
-
emy the infidel
Congress has always declined to outlaw it, 5 times thus far.
But they have to run out and act outraged about it.
-
mrsjones5
In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice.
I heard that yesterday on NPR
-
oompa
Yes it was torture. I was only going 18 mph behind my boat and was sore for days.........oompa.....but, like sex, it was a lot of fun while I was up
-
eclipse
http://people.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding.htm
CIA members who've undergone the technique as part of their training have lasted an average of 14 seconds before begging to be released.
The Navy SEALs once used water boarding in their counter-interrogation training, but they stopped because the trainees could not survive it without breaking, which was bad for morale.
When the CIA used the water-boarding technique on al-Qaeda operative and supposed "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he reportedly lasted more than two minutes before confessing to everything of which he was accused. Anonymous CIA sources report that Mohammed's interrogators were impressed.
Most CIA officials say water boarding is not torture, although many see it as a poor interrogation method because it scares the prisoner so much you can't trust anything he tells you.
Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a POW during the Vietnam War, says water boarding is definitely a form of torture. Human rights groups agree unanimously that "simulated drowning," causing the prisoner to believe he is about to die, is undoubtedly a form of psychological torture.
The international community recognizes "mock executions" as a form of torture, and many place water boarding in that category. In 1947, a Japanese soldier who used water boarding against a U.S. citizen during World War II was sentenced to 15 years in U.S. prison for committing a war crime.
What is it?
Water boarding as it is currently described involves strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person's arms and legs so he can't move at all, and they cover his face. In some descriptions, the person is gagged, and some sort of cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person's face.
Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person's mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person's mind believes he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.
It's a form of torture, hands down.
If even professionals who are trained to handle torture, cannot stand it, it's got to be a horrible experience.
(I missed where sixofnine describes it, sorry)