Waterboarding..Interrogation or Torture?(video)

[Yeager]

torture and we should be ashamed.

You go on and be ashamed of your bad self, besides its a basic component of human emotion and should be excercised from time to time. 

I understand whats at stake in the world today and I say go for it, within strict limits of course....we dont want to be water boarding traffic violators and folks late on their mortgage 

[Yeager]

yep.. bz gets it.   I too have misgivings about the tazers and such that they have now..

I know rich 46 will say I am an unamerican cop hater but..  I simply believe that because government (and cops) have so much power over us that they need to be held to a much higher moral standard.

You can't not see this and still think that a cop killer is the worst..  the reasoning is that if he will kill a cop he will kill anyone.. it is sound logic.. just as any cop (or government) who would abuse the power they have over the citizen is especialy bad.

lazs

lazs, would you kill a cop if he/she was trying to kill you 

[SkyRock]

I think we learned it in vietnam...  we were letting the south vietnamese do it to the black pajama guys and gals.

It is torture.    there is no doubt.   I do not believe in my government having the right to torture anyone.  That is a very bad and slippery slope to be on.  governments should be held to very high standards so far as torture goes.

On a personal level.. I hate the idea of it but if I needed to know something to save on of my own.. I would do it in a second.  It would be extremely distasteful.

If that sounds hypocritical then so be it.   I simply believe that governments should be held to higher standards since they have so much more power over people.

lazs

The very fact that it doesn't actually kill or maim someone is a reason I think it is dangerous...they will have less hesitation about using it and less inhibition against someday applying it against Americans. After all, why not use waterboarding on Joey "Tunafish" Patella if it means he'll tell us who his mob associates are?

I have the same misgivings about all this "less than lethal" weaponry stuff they are devising.

These two have hit it spot on.  To legalize and accept this behavior, one should also accept the fact that they, or their children/grandchildren, will be subjected to this new, legal, way of getting information.  This acceptance takes civilized life backwards in the form of "whatever it takes"......all because of what....fear? 

It takes courage to advance forward in the face of fear without resorting to the uncivilized behavior of our enemies.  Letting fear drag the good down only empowers this type of enemy, as fear is all they have against us. 

Good will always prevail against evil, and it shall do so with dignity.

 

Mark

[Yeager]

Good will always prevail against evil, and it shall do so with dignity.

The sun will burn all its fuel and our home, the only known planet in the universe to have life, our planet Earth will die.  Question: Will good have prevailed against evil at that time?  and with dignity?  Just keeping it real baby....just keeping it real.

[SkyRock]

The sun will burn all its fuel and our home, the only known planet in the universe to have life, our planet Earth will die.  Question: Will good have prevailed against evil at that time?  and with dignity?  Just keeping it real baby....just keeping it real.

Yes, if you want to look at it the way I do.  The sun is good, it brings us life, in continuing to burn until it has destroyed everything we know as life, it will have completed it's life cycle, which is good. 

On to the point I was making with my statement you quoted.  When we as a civilized people allow the evils of a few to bestow upon us their character, we have let evil win.  Only when we stand up against fear and evil, without compromising the characteristics that make us good, shall we, the good, prevail against evil.  It has been so since the beginning.

[midnight Target]

It's torture and unacceptable.  I have no desire to watch terrorist kidnappers slice off a guy's head.  Nor would I have any desire to watch our own soldiers terrorize a prisoner.  I find it sad that any other Americans would find it acceptable.  I find it simply deplorable that our President would condone this behavior.

Trouty McTroutypants speaks wisely.

[DYNAMITE]

Waterboarding?  The Japs?  They used to cut the livers out of our airmen and eat them and you think we prosecuted them for waterboarding?



What were the names of these Japanese? And provide supporting information.

Well here you go Rich... though i doubt you'll take the time to read it-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

Maybe you'll find this quote interesting-
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

or this-
Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

Or maybe John McCain can convince you...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/politics/main3554687.shtml

"There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that as torture otherwise we wouldn't have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans," McCain said during a news conference.

[BnZ]

Good will always prevail against evil, and it shall do so with dignity.

Mark

Never has, never will, and I don't see any sign of that changing unless the American people have alot more capacity for getting pissed off than I have seen before.

Very little difference between us and say, ancient Sumeria, fundamentally. The state/overlords still steals the largest percentage of what the people produce one way or another. The only difference is that technology has made things so productive that we are comfortably fat and happy with what they leave us (for now). The methods of control are less brutal nowadays, but that has alot to do with the people being alot wimpier and easier to control.

[Yeager]

When we as a civilized people allow the evils of a few to bestow upon us their character, we have let evil win. 

In a sense you are over analyzing the thing.  Let me under analyze it for you.  A much smaller kid, a real little snot of a fellow, is using every dirty trick in the book and he is kicking your bellybutton on the playground.  You, being a much bigger fellow with a comparable chip on your shoulders is refraining from beating the crap out of the little guy out of some holier than thou sense of fair play.  Let me tell you, that little guy will end up killing you because you wont fight his fight, which being dirty and underhanded gives him every advantage in the book.

For me, it is fair for the big guy to throttle the little guy unconcious and after doing that, to stomp his little brains into the dirt.  We are talking about a life or death struggle here.

Sometimes good people have to do bad things to bad people in order to survive.

Just how I see things. 

[Yeager]

Well here you go Rich... though i doubt you'll take the time to read it-

Heres a little view from the other side:  Yeager writes in his book about being ordered to take squadrons of P51s low over Hitlers Germany to bomb and strafe German civilians for the purpose of demoraliztion.  Yeager, upon hearing the orders remarked to the airmen nearby "I sure as hell hope we win this thing, because if we dont, well be tried as war criminals." Followed by descriptions of attacks against civilians on foot,  horsedrawn, in vehicles, buildings, trains......targeting civilians.  Men, woman, and children.

Just goes to show the utmost hypocracy demonstrated by those of you that think we have to fight fair.  War aint like that guys.  Soon as people start getting killed things start to unwind.  Keep your eyes on the prize you bastidges! 

[bongaroo]

In a sense you are over analyzing the thing.  Let me under analyze it for you.  A much smaller kid, a real little snot of a fellow, is using every dirty trick in the book and he is kicking your bellybutton on the playground.  You, being a much bigger fellow with a comparable chip on your shoulders is refraining from beating the crap out of the little guy out of some holier than thou sense of fair play.  Let me tell you, that little guy will end up killing you because you wont fight his fight, which being dirty and underhanded gives him every advantage in the book.

For me, it is fair for the big guy to throttle the little guy unconcious and after doing that, to stomp his little brains into the dirt.  We are talking about a life or death struggle here.

Sometimes good people have to do bad things to bad people in order to survive.

Just how I see things. 

a life or death struggle on the playground?  that is about the worst comparision i've seen in a while.

[BnZ]

Yeager, what is in question is not ass-kicking or even killing, both of which you darn well know I believe should be applied to whosoever has it coming.

We're talking torture. There are good reason why men may respect an enemy warrior on the battlefield, but not a practicioner of torture. There are reasons for not doing torture that have absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not the torturee is a swell guy. Its about who we are, not who they are.

You wanna get just pragmatic as all get out? Okay, every boy hurling rocks at an American convoy has the potential to grow up to be an Islamic terrorist, a planter of IEDs, etc. He is in the right place, he has the hatred. Why not just kill 'em all? Nits become lice aye? Just like a scene out Exodus. It would be practical, probably stop more terrorism than merely trying to torture a little information out of some grubby dude we captured in Iraq or Afghanistan who probably knows nothing anyway.

[SkyRock]

Its about who we are, not who they are.

I was trying to convey this to yeager, but I'm a little longwinded today.

[Yeager]

that is about the worst comparision i've seen in a while.

I was rather tickled by it 

[Yeager]

You wanna get just pragmatic as all get out? Okay, every boy hurling rocks at an American convoy has the potential to grow up to be an Islamic terrorist, a planter of IEDs, etc. He is in the right place, he has the hatred. Why not just kill 'em all? Nits become lice aye? Just like a scene out Exodus. It would be practical, probably stop more terrorism than merely trying to torture a little information out of some grubby dude we captured in Iraq or Afghanistan who probably knows nothing anyway.

Love is all you need