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COMMENTS:
Voted : No
Back when I was at Annapolis, I took a class in resisting torture methods, including waterboarding.
Let me say now -- it ain't fun.
As the water hits your face and backsplashes into your mouth and nose, it triggers your gag reflex, making it all the harder for you to take a clean breath even when the water has stopped falling. IMO, Hannity wouldn't last ten seconds.
Voted : No
It is an outrage that the technique was ever used. It may have originated with the Spanish Inquisition, but that was then and this is now. I will never be able to comprehend how the Bush administration could ever have allowed it. It's cruel and sick.
Voted : Yes
If I was involved in a terrorist plot or organization, I shouldn't be surprised to recieve such treatment.
Voted : No
but I would allow Hannity to get his wish
Voted : Yes
Sure, if it was for charity or something. It's hardly torture when you know you can call it off if it gets too be too intense.
Voted : Yes
I'll go do it at WCG wee.
Voted : No
at the trial of cambodia's pol pot regime, photos of waterboarding was shown as an evidence of crimes against humanity.
US government really dropped the balls on this. of course it was done behind our backs. sooner or later the culprits should be brought to justice, for the sake of USA citizenry. We need to wash our hands clean of this mess.
by LCD on Mon Apr 27, 09 9:39pm
[+]
Voted : No
I read that it causes lasting traumatic effects.
^ forgetmenot, it DOES. To this day, I freak out if my face gets splashed.
Voted : No
NFW. This can't be good for the central nervous system. I value my body far too much to do experiments on it.
Voted : No
I've got enough wrong with me already to risk something like that. Anyway, it goes against my motto: "No Pain - No Pain!"
George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.
Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case - which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later - was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.
Uncle Randy
The Japanese were charged with war crimes after WWII for waterboarding. Why is it somehow not torture when Americans are doing it?
I would like to see evidence of the japanese actually being charged, specifically, for waterboarding, considering that they were cutting the heads off of their POW's, amonth other horrific things they did to those in their camps.
^ sure jappy.
The war crimes tribunal was officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."
Sources:
1. Politifact Interview with R. John Pritchard, author of The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1981
2.
Politifact Interview with Yuma Totani, history professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts," May 2007
Okay, that is fine, but if I remember studying those tribunals correctly, those who were actually sentenced to death were not done so on the basis of torture but due to the actual cause of death of both Chinese, Australian, American, and even Japanese outlying island prisoners. Reason being, the justification for the death penalty being that of death itself. This has been a few years ago while I was in college, but I remember it because we had a lengthy discussion about the idea that the United States would put someone to death for crimes that in and of themselves did not take a life, outside of espionage and child rape (rape was recently removed from justification for the death penalty in *I believe* the last state that still allowed it).
Certainly your ballot presents basically a predetermined answer, only a fool would 'allow' themselves to be waterboarded, due to the rather intense and frightening nature of the torture.
I think the issue at hand is of morality, you have an enemy that does not fear death, due to the ill conceived notions of their religion concerning martyrism. This enemy has no concerns for women and children, but in return we are expected to uphold rights for them. Rarely do you see two teams playing with different sets of rules where the more stringently controlled team 'wins', so to speak.
Is waterboarding torture? Certainly. Is it wrong? There in lies the issue, and another question about whether it is good for the public to know everything their government is doing.
^it's only wrong to law abiding countries.
Christopher Hitchens and some other right wing torture apologist who were determined to prove it wasn't torture had the guts to be water boarded and both agreed that it WAS torture.
Both can be seen on You Tube.
End of!
Have it done to yourself before you bullshit on here disagreeing with their opinions.
Voted : No
It's horrific apparently.
Torture apologists try to claim it's 'simulated drowning' but it's arguably even worse than real drowning.
Why?
Well for one it's being inflicted on you by fellow human beings.
You are tethered so can't move to take evasive action as you might if you were momentarily overwhelmed by a freak wave say on the beach.
You are cannot see because of the blindfold.
A couple of pro waterboarding media journalists - most notably Christopher Hitchens - took up the challenge to be water boarded and could only stand a few seconds of the torture before begging for it to stop, and agreed afterwards that they were being drowned, and that it was not 'simulated drowning'.
It has since emerged that Hitchens and co were only subjected to the mildest form of this torture and that the reality is far worse.
Whereas these journalists in a controlled and unhostile environment were getting just a taster, the real torture only starts at the point where they they were screaming and banging for it to stop.
Because at that point they had only had the water block their sinuses and airways, but had they waited any longer the water would have entered their lungs and they would have had no alternative but to breathe it in.
I heard that on 9/11, the CIA was onboard those planes waterboarding the arabs and forcing them to fly the planes into the towers. Any thoughts on that Ken?
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