Waterboarding is Torture...Period

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
81

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? “Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them. I wonder how I go about contacting the brothers so I can voluteer? I did see that one group holding up the head of an infidel (or Iraqi Soldier), while standing next to his shredded and disfigured body. Maybe I can get some contact info from one of my brothers at the local mosque!”

The enemy, and those joining them, don’t give a flip about the US waterboarding…[/quote]

I will immediately send this memo to Gen. Petreaus. and other experts in COIN.

82

[quote]100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? “Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them. I wonder how I go about contacting the brothers so I can voluteer? I did see that one group holding up the head of an infidel (or Iraqi Soldier), while standing next to his shredded and disfigured body. Maybe I can get some contact info from one of my brothers at the local mosque!”

The enemy, and those joining them, don’t give a flip about the US waterboarding…

I will immediately send this memo to Gen. Petreaus. and other experts in COIN.[/quote]

Please do. If anything, it’s good to see how much you value the General’s positions. His report on Iraq was encouraging, no?

Now, you personally. You honestly believe members of an enemy that routinely dismember and decapitate prisoners, sometimes dozens at a time, are suddenly saying “Oh, the humanity of it all! Where has the sense of honorable combat gone! Oh brother, could you please hand me that blow-torch, and hold this one down.”

Do you really believe this? We aren’t discussing some conventional state force who gives and expects humane treatment.

83

[quote]Sloth wrote:
100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? “Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them. I wonder how I go about contacting the brothers so I can voluteer? I did see that one group holding up the head of an infidel (or Iraqi Soldier), while standing next to his shredded and disfigured body. Maybe I can get some contact info from one of my brothers at the local mosque!”

The enemy, and those joining them, don’t give a flip about the US waterboarding…

I will immediately send this memo to Gen. Petreaus. and other experts in COIN.

Please do. If anything, it’s good to see how much you value the General’s positions. His report on Iraq was encouraging, no?

Now, you personally. You honestly believe members of an enemy that routinely dismembers and decapitates prisoners, sometimes dozens at a time, is suddenly saying “Oh, the humanity of it all! Where has the sense of honorable combat gone! Oh brother, could you please hand me that blow-torch, and hold this one down.”

Do you really believe this? We aren’t discussing some conventional state force who gives and expects human treatment.[/quote]

Well no political reconciliation after “security gains”, is actually NOT encouraging (the opposite)

Does the enemy use the seeming hypocrisy of our policies as propoganda against us? Uh, yeah, factually they do this all the time.

84

[quote]100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? “Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them. I wonder how I go about contacting the brothers so I can voluteer? I did see that one group holding up the head of an infidel (or Iraqi Soldier), while standing next to his shredded and disfigured body. Maybe I can get some contact info from one of my brothers at the local mosque!”

The enemy, and those joining them, don’t give a flip about the US waterboarding…

I will immediately send this memo to Gen. Petreaus. and other experts in COIN.

Please do. If anything, it’s good to see how much you value the General’s positions. His report on Iraq was encouraging, no?

Now, you personally. You honestly believe members of an enemy that routinely dismembers and decapitates prisoners, sometimes dozens at a time, is suddenly saying “Oh, the humanity of it all! Where has the sense of honorable combat gone! Oh brother, could you please hand me that blow-torch, and hold this one down.”

Do you really believe this? We aren’t discussing some conventional state force who gives and expects human treatment.

Well no political reconciliation after “security gains”, is actually NOT encouraging (the opposite)

Does the enemy use the seeming hypocrisy of our policies as propoganda against us? Uh, yeah, factually they do this all the time. [/quote]

No political reconciliation? No, there wasn’t a poof, all done moment, if that is what you meant. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. They’re mulling over big decisions over there.

Propaganda? Aimed at who? Those wanting to join death squading, market bombing, terror cells? Yeah, don’t really think waterboarding is an outrage for them.

And what hypocrisy? Maybe if we were burning them with blowtorches while asking them not to…

85

[quote]100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
You guys that claim it doesn’t work are kidding yourselves.

Can you cite some documented cases where waterboarding (or similar torture techniques) have successfully saved lives?

Can you prove to me it wasn’t? There are a number of links already posted saying it made the bad guys sing like canaries. When they started turning in other terrorists that equals saved lives.

It is very hard to get real information on exactly what these guys say during interrogation. We don’t want the enemy to know what we have learned so any news stories you read do not have a complete picture. If they pretend to then they are lying and they can be discounted.

Despite there being no credible evidence that torture produced reliable evidence, it’s enough for Zap if the president says it works, even if he also says we don’t do it.

Meanwhile the evidence it doesn’t work/ or is unwarranted is just ignored. So despite the fact there are countless stories now of people like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi giving up false information(or as Zap would put it “singing like a canary”) under torture (info already known to be false but STILL used by Powell at the UN) Zap will still trust “unknown sources” in the whitehouse or the national review.[/quote]

There is ZERO credible evidence it does not work!!!

The fact that you believe media stories written by left wing writers that cannot possibly know what is happening and use “unnamed sources” speaks volumes about you.

86

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:

There is ZERO credible evidence it does not work!!!
[/quote]

I agree. It works intrinsically, you would have to subject me to what amounts to torture to convince me it doesn’t work and that would only prove that it works.

The actual problem is that it works too well, you get copious amounts of information of a moderate to high degree of inaccuracy as opposed to abysmal amounts of information of a low to moderate degree of accuracy.

87

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
100meters wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
You guys that claim it doesn’t work are kidding yourselves.

Can you cite some documented cases where waterboarding (or similar torture techniques) have successfully saved lives?

Can you prove to me it wasn’t? There are a number of links already posted saying it made the bad guys sing like canaries. When they started turning in other terrorists that equals saved lives.

It is very hard to get real information on exactly what these guys say during interrogation. We don’t want the enemy to know what we have learned so any news stories you read do not have a complete picture. If they pretend to then they are lying and they can be discounted.

Despite there being no credible evidence that torture produced reliable evidence, it’s enough for Zap if the president says it works, even if he also says we don’t do it.

Meanwhile the evidence it doesn’t work/ or is unwarranted is just ignored. So despite the fact there are countless stories now of people like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi giving up false information(or as Zap would put it “singing like a canary”) under torture (info already known to be false but STILL used by Powell at the UN) Zap will still trust “unknown sources” in the whitehouse or the national review.

There is ZERO credible evidence it does not work!!!

The fact that you believe media stories written by left wing writers that cannot possibly know what is happening and use “unnamed sources” speaks volumes about you.[/quote]

Blatantly false. I have posted on this before, most notably an interview with Colonel Stuart Herrington, one of the Army’s chief interrogators in Vietnam, and a man who’s convinced torture is counter-productive. You can google “Stuart Herrington” and “Hugh Hewitt” and it oughta turn up.

I’m not convinced torture doesn’t work. I’ve heard that a key part of Jordanian successes against Al Qaeda has been a room full of tools normally found in the hands of a carpenter and a butcher. But it is not a closed case.

88

[quote]100meters wrote:
]
If it doesn’t and causes side A to waste time and resources and further motivates side B, then best to not do it.
[/quote]

Prove it.

Prove that the insurgency is more motivated because we might waterboard. Prove that it wastes time.

Your opinion is worthless here - as are you quotes from others stating their opinions as well. Try citing proof. You know what that is, right? Somehow - i doubt proof is anything beyond what George Soros, or Billary tell you it is.

89

The pro-torture crowd (that’s what it is) is missing the forest for the trees. Leaving aside the main point, which is that torture is reprehensible and it’s a mark of our degradation as a society that so many people are willing to condone it, the forest is being missed for the trees when it comes to its effectiveness in the war against Islamic extremism.

This is not a conventional war. I don’t know why some people are still too stupid to grasp this. It is a global counter-insurgency, according to the likes of Colonel David Kilcullen, who’s just a bit more of an expert than most people on here. Success ultimately depends on winning the war of ideas, like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). Even if torture were to give us useful, time-sensitive tactical information, strategically it is a disaster.

It convinces those on the fence, especially Muslims, that we are the bad guys, and all the talk of democracy and human rights is nothing but hypocrisy. The damage it does to America’s image drastically outweighs any immediate benefits. Pretty simple.

90

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
…

Blatantly false. I have posted on this before, most notably an interview with Colonel Stuart Herrington, one of the Army’s chief interrogators in Vietnam, and a man who’s convinced torture is counter-productive. You can google “Stuart Herrington” and “Hugh Hewitt” and it oughta turn up.

I’m not convinced torture doesn’t work. I’ve heard that a key part of Jordanian successes against Al Qaeda has been a room full of tools normally found in the hands of a carpenter and a butcher. But it is not a closed case.[/quote]

Is he conducting the waterboarding today? No? Then he has no idea what info has been produced.

Do you believe that someone that did interrogations for a living is going to tell the truth about this stuff? They always blame someone else and claim it doesn’t work to ease their conscience.

It works. It is not the only method to be used and should be a last resort but it works. Too much abuse is counter productive but just the right amount works. Some guys end up never talking but that is not because waterboarding doesn’t work.

91

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
… like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). …[/quote]

You really are naive. Some of the shit we did in Viet Nam was 100 times worse.

And if Muslims hate us because we waterboard a handful of people and embrace radical Islam which uses power drills on hundreds or thousands then they are a lost cause anyway.

92

[quote]Sloth wrote:
100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
100meters wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? “Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them. I wonder how I go about contacting the brothers so I can voluteer? I did see that one group holding up the head of an infidel (or Iraqi Soldier), while standing next to his shredded and disfigured body. Maybe I can get some contact info from one of my brothers at the local mosque!”

The enemy, and those joining them, don’t give a flip about the US waterboarding…

I will immediately send this memo to Gen. Petreaus. and other experts in COIN.

Please do. If anything, it’s good to see how much you value the General’s positions. His report on Iraq was encouraging, no?

Now, you personally. You honestly believe members of an enemy that routinely dismembers and decapitates prisoners, sometimes dozens at a time, is suddenly saying “Oh, the humanity of it all! Where has the sense of honorable combat gone! Oh brother, could you please hand me that blow-torch, and hold this one down.”

Do you really believe this? We aren’t discussing some conventional state force who gives and expects human treatment.

Well no political reconciliation after “security gains”, is actually NOT encouraging (the opposite)

Does the enemy use the seeming hypocrisy of our policies as propoganda against us? Uh, yeah, factually they do this all the time.

No political reconciliation? No, there wasn’t a poof, all done moment, if that is what you meant. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. They’re mulling over big decisions over there.

Propaganda? Aimed at who? Those wanting to join death squading, market bombing, terror cells? Yeah, don’t really think waterboarding is an outrage for them.

And what hypocrisy? Maybe if we were burning them with blowtorches while asking them not to…[/quote]
They aren’t even mulling. Again, the goal of the surge-is not happening, it’s regressing–and that is not encouraging(the opposite).

Propoganda aimed at those who would join the insurgency to remove the occupation (you Know–everybody in Iraq). And yes our detention policies clearly and outrage for them…you seriously never knew they use Gitmo and Abu ghraib as propoganda–I find this- hard to believe.

93

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
The pro-torture crowd (that’s what it is) is missing the forest for the trees. Leaving aside the main point, which is that torture is reprehensible and it’s a mark of our degradation as a society that so many people are willing to condone it, the forest is being missed for the trees when it comes to its effectiveness in the war against Islamic extremism.

This is not a conventional war. I don’t know why some people are still too stupid to grasp this. It is a global counter-insurgency, according to the likes of Colonel David Kilcullen, who’s just a bit more of an expert than most people on here. Success ultimately depends on winning the war of ideas, like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). Even if torture were to give us useful, time-sensitive tactical information, strategically it is a disaster.

It convinces those on the fence, especially Muslims, that we are the bad guys, and all the talk of democracy and human rights is nothing but hypocrisy. The damage it does to America’s image drastically outweighs any immediate benefits. Pretty simple.[/quote]

This will be entirely lost on the knuckle dragging, mouth-breathers in here. That a big part of the war on terror is a P.R. campaign and doesn’t involve nuking brown people is heresy to them.

94

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
The pro-torture crowd (that’s what it is) is missing the forest for the trees. Leaving aside the main point, which is that torture is reprehensible and it’s a mark of our degradation as a society that so many people are willing to condone it, the forest is being missed for the trees when it comes to its effectiveness in the war against Islamic extremism.

This is not a conventional war. I don’t know why some people are still too stupid to grasp this. It is a global counter-insurgency, according to the likes of Colonel David Kilcullen, who’s just a bit more of an expert than most people on here. Success ultimately depends on winning the war of ideas, like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). Even if torture were to give us useful, time-sensitive tactical information, strategically it is a disaster.

It convinces those on the fence, especially Muslims, that we are the bad guys, and all the talk of democracy and human rights is nothing but hypocrisy. The damage it does to America’s image drastically outweighs any immediate benefits. Pretty simple.[/quote]

You guys are hopeless. The pro-terrorist crowd (and that is exactly what you are) will do anything, say anything, and quote whoever is convenient at the time to make the US look as bad as possible. Especially when it gets air-time from a willing press.

Which gives the terrorists more resolve? Interrogation practices, or Hanoi Jane like sympathizers?

No one has stood up with any proof that waterboarding is ineffective.

95

[quote]100meters wrote:
This will be entirely lost on the knuckle dragging, mouth-breathers in here. That a big part of the war on terror is a P.R. campaign and doesn’t involve nuking brown people is heresy to them.
[/quote]

The biggest part of the war is killing people and breaking things. The PR campaign is to make tree-hugging, birkenstock, wearing hemp smokers like you feel better about themselves.

Peace comes when people can govern themselves. Not when you feel warm and fuzzy.

96

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:

It works. It is not the only method to be used and should be a last resort but it works. Too much abuse is counter productive but just the right amount works. Some guys end up never talking but that is not because waterboarding doesn’t work.[/quote]

Zap, we often talk about using water-boarding or other torture methods as a last resort. Do you feel that we were right in water-boarding KSM?

mike

97

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:

It works. It is not the only method to be used and should be a last resort but it works. Too much abuse is counter productive but just the right amount works. Some guys end up never talking but that is not because waterboarding doesn’t work.

Zap, we often talk about using water-boarding or other torture methods as a last resort. Do you feel that we were right in water-boarding KSM?

mike[/quote]

Probably. I really don’t know all the circumstances but from what I have read he wasn’t talking. When he was waterboarded he started to talk immediately. I have read a number of places (right wing)that he offered useful information. I have also read in other places (left wing) he did not. Either way I will not shed a tear for him.

98

[quote]rainjack wrote:
The pro-terrorist crowd (and that is exactly what you are) will do anything, say anything, and quote whoever is convenient at the time to make the US look as bad as possible. [/quote]

That’s quite a leap. Anyone who thinks torture is wrong does not necessarily root for “the terrorists” (whoever they may be).

Look at it this way; stealing is a very effective way to make money. Does it make it right? Hell no!

Torture is wrong, period. You’d think that, in the 21st century, people wouldn’t be arguing about that. edited

99

Every government around the world tortures people period. If you don’t believe me go over there and claim yourself a spy and see what happens.

We should be thankful enough that we have limits to our torture!

I have been to countries where it is common practice to rip the finger nails off of people to get them to talk, and this is only the first step in the process! I walked by the wrong room and was escorted out because “I wouldn’t want to see what goes on in there.” The guy that worked for this countries government told me, “they don’t call this place the figernail factory for nothing”.

So it’s stupid to even debate this. Since there has been war there has been torture. It flat out works, not 100% of the time, but enough that when needed it is an effective tool.

This is why the general public doesn’t need to know all of the dirty work that needs to be done to keep this country safe. Trust me, if we were all nice to everyone in the world and put away all our weapons, we would be invaded.

Better or for worse we aren’t Poland and we have enemies who would love to destroy us, as such we have to play dirty. In a perfect world we would have been nice to everyone to start off with, or better yet we could be nice now and no one would hold previous bad decisions against us, but that wont happen.

100

I think that the military has been using torture way too much though. They need to realize that there are better ways of getting information out of people without dragging them from one country to another and torture them.

They need to take a page out of the CIA’s and realize that if you pay someone off you can get the same information and come back to that person later on if they have more info you want.

Mass torture does not work and will only make the cause against you more determined.