How Long Before Vetting Is Called Torture??

[NYcarbineer]

1. Having control of the media serves the Left well!
After 9/11, in an effort to weaken and undermine Bush's efforts against terrorism, the Liberals/Democrats shouted that enhanced interrogation was "TORTURE!!!"

Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country, oblivious to worldwide terrorism in support of a caliphate, he has threatened to veto any increased vetting of these individuals

"The White House on Wednesday threatened a presidential veto of House Republican legislation aimed at increasing screenings for Syrian and Iraqi refugees before they enter the United States, calling new requirements in the bill "untenable.""
Obama Threatens to Veto House GOP Bill on Syrian Refugees


Can cries of "TORTURE!!!" be far behind?
So....before the Left engages in the usual societal indoctrination.....let's remind all of what torture actually is.



2.. Having co-opted and controlled the various agencies that disseminate information has proven to be a boon to the Leftists/Liberals who now control this secular society. In the ObamaCare legislation, the panel whose efforts would have resulted in death was not allowed to be called a "Death Panel."

So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

But labeled 'torture,' they were.


Then, there is actual torture.
3. "In a public square in Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin was executed before a crowd of onlookers. He was among the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi. Called by Western observers “death by a thousand cuts” or “death by slicing,” this penalty was reserved for the very worst crimes in imperial China.

A unique interdisciplinary history, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the tenth century until lingchi's abolition in 1905. The authors then turn their attention to an in-depth investigation of “oriental” tortures in the Western imagination."
https://books.google.com/booksid=7TfWj_N6QXYC&dq=exquisite+torture+Kublai+Khan's+court&sitesec=reviews

"Death by a Thousand Cuts"
By Timothy Brook, Jérôme Bourgon, Gregory Blue




a. "Lingchi... translated variously asdeath by a thousand cuts(simplified Chinese:杀千刀;traditional Chinese:殺千刀) or “千刀万剐”, theslow process, thelingering death, orslow slicing, was a form of torture andexecutionused in Chinafrom roughly AD 900 until it was banned in 1905.


In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. The term "língchí" is derived from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.Lingchiwas reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason, or killing one's parents.


The process involved tying the condemned prisoner to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law, and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opiumwas sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death." Lingchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Depriving a suspect of sleep?
Having a suspect to stand in uncomfortable positions for many hours at a time?
Torture?

How long before reading a Political Chic post is called torture?

The best part of PC's interminable posts is that you only have to read a few lines to find something refutable.

So your statement is that you haven't read a few lines yet?

NO, my statement is you're wrong. Almost always.

I'm never wrong.

The proof is your posts.

Arrogance and ignorance are a deadly combination. Be careful.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. Having control of the media serves the Left well!
After 9/11, in an effort to weaken and undermine Bush's efforts against terrorism, the Liberals/Democrats shouted that enhanced interrogation was "TORTURE!!!"

Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country, oblivious to worldwide terrorism in support of a caliphate, he has threatened to veto any increased vetting of these individuals

"The White House on Wednesday threatened a presidential veto of House Republican legislation aimed at increasing screenings for Syrian and Iraqi refugees before they enter the United States, calling new requirements in the bill "untenable.""
Obama Threatens to Veto House GOP Bill on Syrian Refugees


Can cries of "TORTURE!!!" be far behind?
So....before the Left engages in the usual societal indoctrination.....let's remind all of what torture actually is.



2.. Having co-opted and controlled the various agencies that disseminate information has proven to be a boon to the Leftists/Liberals who now control this secular society. In the ObamaCare legislation, the panel whose efforts would have resulted in death was not allowed to be called a "Death Panel."

So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

But labeled 'torture,' they were.


Then, there is actual torture.
3. "In a public square in Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin was executed before a crowd of onlookers. He was among the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi. Called by Western observers “death by a thousand cuts” or “death by slicing,” this penalty was reserved for the very worst crimes in imperial China.

A unique interdisciplinary history, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the tenth century until lingchi's abolition in 1905. The authors then turn their attention to an in-depth investigation of “oriental” tortures in the Western imagination."
https://books.google.com/booksid=7TfWj_N6QXYC&dq=exquisite+torture+Kublai+Khan's+court&sitesec=reviews

"Death by a Thousand Cuts"
By Timothy Brook, Jérôme Bourgon, Gregory Blue




a. "Lingchi... translated variously asdeath by a thousand cuts(simplified Chinese:杀千刀;traditional Chinese:殺千刀) or “千刀万剐”, theslow process, thelingering death, orslow slicing, was a form of torture andexecutionused in Chinafrom roughly AD 900 until it was banned in 1905.


In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. The term "língchí" is derived from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.Lingchiwas reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason, or killing one's parents.


The process involved tying the condemned prisoner to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law, and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opiumwas sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death." Lingchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Depriving a suspect of sleep?
Having a suspect to stand in uncomfortable positions for many hours at a time?
Torture?

How long before reading a Political Chic post is called torture?

The best part of PC's interminable posts is that you only have to read a few lines to find something refutable.

So your statement is that you haven't read a few lines yet?

I only had to read 4 lines into your tedious rant to find this:

"Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country,"

That is an unsubstantiated allegation on your part.

"Immigraton To Swell Muslim Population to 6.2 Million
According to U.S. Census Data, the United States admits roughly 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year, representing the fastest growing block of immigration into the United States. Tennessee, in fact, is home to one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, causing thePresident to give a recent speech there in favor of expansive immigration.

This demographic change is entirely the product of legal admissions–that is, it is a formal policy of the federal government adopted by Congress.

Another major source of Middle Eastern immigration into the United States is done through our nation’s refugee program. Every year the United Stated admits 70,000 asylees and refugees.Arabic is the most common language spoken by refugees, and91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.

The importation of Middle Eastern immigrants through the nation’s refugee program hasled to the development of pockets of radicalized communities throughout the United States." Immigration to Swell U.S. Muslim Population to 6.2 Million - Breitbart

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. Having control of the media serves the Left well!
After 9/11, in an effort to weaken and undermine Bush's efforts against terrorism, the Liberals/Democrats shouted that enhanced interrogation was "TORTURE!!!"

Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country, oblivious to worldwide terrorism in support of a caliphate, he has threatened to veto any increased vetting of these individuals

"The White House on Wednesday threatened a presidential veto of House Republican legislation aimed at increasing screenings for Syrian and Iraqi refugees before they enter the United States, calling new requirements in the bill "untenable.""
Obama Threatens to Veto House GOP Bill on Syrian Refugees


Can cries of "TORTURE!!!" be far behind?
So....before the Left engages in the usual societal indoctrination.....let's remind all of what torture actually is.



2.. Having co-opted and controlled the various agencies that disseminate information has proven to be a boon to the Leftists/Liberals who now control this secular society. In the ObamaCare legislation, the panel whose efforts would have resulted in death was not allowed to be called a "Death Panel."

So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

But labeled 'torture,' they were.


Then, there is actual torture.
3. "In a public square in Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin was executed before a crowd of onlookers. He was among the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi. Called by Western observers “death by a thousand cuts” or “death by slicing,” this penalty was reserved for the very worst crimes in imperial China.

A unique interdisciplinary history, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the tenth century until lingchi's abolition in 1905. The authors then turn their attention to an in-depth investigation of “oriental” tortures in the Western imagination."
https://books.google.com/booksid=7TfWj_N6QXYC&dq=exquisite+torture+Kublai+Khan's+court&sitesec=reviews

"Death by a Thousand Cuts"
By Timothy Brook, Jérôme Bourgon, Gregory Blue




a. "Lingchi... translated variously asdeath by a thousand cuts(simplified Chinese:杀千刀;traditional Chinese:殺千刀) or “千刀万剐”, theslow process, thelingering death, orslow slicing, was a form of torture andexecutionused in Chinafrom roughly AD 900 until it was banned in 1905.


In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. The term "língchí" is derived from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.Lingchiwas reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason, or killing one's parents.


The process involved tying the condemned prisoner to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law, and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opiumwas sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death." Lingchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Depriving a suspect of sleep?
Having a suspect to stand in uncomfortable positions for many hours at a time?
Torture?

How long before reading a Political Chic post is called torture?

The best part of PC's interminable posts is that you only have to read a few lines to find something refutable.

So your statement is that you haven't read a few lines yet?

I only had to read 4 lines into your tedious rant to find this:

"Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country,"

That is an unsubstantiated allegation on your part.

"Immigraton To Swell Muslim Population to 6.2 Million
According to U.S. Census Data, the United States admits roughly 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year, representing the fastest growing block of immigration into the United States. Tennessee, in fact, is home to one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, causing thePresident to give a recent speech there in favor of expansive immigration.

This demographic change is entirely the product of legal admissions–that is, it is a formal policy of the federal government adopted by Congress.

Another major source of Middle Eastern immigration into the United States is done through our nation’s refugee program. Every year the United Stated admits 70,000 asylees and refugees.Arabic is the most common language spoken by refugees, and91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.

The importation of Middle Eastern immigrants through the nation’s refugee program hasled to the development of pockets of radicalized communities throughout the United States." Immigration to Swell U.S. Muslim Population to 6.2 Million - Breitbart

The question was, when did President Obama demand to bring in hundreds of thousands from the ME?''

Please answer the question.

 

[PoliticalChic]

How long before reading a Political Chic post is called torture?

The best part of PC's interminable posts is that you only have to read a few lines to find something refutable.

So your statement is that you haven't read a few lines yet?

NO, my statement is you're wrong. Almost always.

I'm never wrong.

The proof is your posts.

Arrogance and ignorance are a deadly combination. Be careful.

You, attempting to critique my posts is like trying to draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

 

[PoliticalChic]

How long before reading a Political Chic post is called torture?

The best part of PC's interminable posts is that you only have to read a few lines to find something refutable.

So your statement is that you haven't read a few lines yet?

I only had to read 4 lines into your tedious rant to find this:

"Now, with an insane man in the Oval Office who demands hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners be brought into the country,"

That is an unsubstantiated allegation on your part.

"Immigraton To Swell Muslim Population to 6.2 Million
According to U.S. Census Data, the United States admits roughly 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year, representing the fastest growing block of immigration into the United States. Tennessee, in fact, is home to one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, causing thePresident to give a recent speech there in favor of expansive immigration.

This demographic change is entirely the product of legal admissions–that is, it is a formal policy of the federal government adopted by Congress.

Another major source of Middle Eastern immigration into the United States is done through our nation’s refugee program. Every year the United Stated admits 70,000 asylees and refugees.Arabic is the most common language spoken by refugees, and91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.

The importation of Middle Eastern immigrants through the nation’s refugee program hasled to the development of pockets of radicalized communities throughout the United States." Immigration to Swell U.S. Muslim Population to 6.2 Million - Breitbart

The question was, when did President Obama demand to bring in hundreds of thousands from the ME?''

Please answer the question.

"Immigraton To Swell Muslim Population to 6.2 Million
According to U.S. Census Data, the United States admits roughly 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year, representing the fastest growing block of immigration into the United States. Tennessee, in fact, is home to one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, causing thePresident to give a recent speechthere in favor of expansive immigration.

This demographic change is entirely the product of legal admissions–that is, it is a formal policy of the federal government adopted by Congress.

Another major source of Middle Eastern immigration into the United States is done through our nation’s refugee program. Every year the United Stated admits 70,000 asylees and refugees.Arabic is the most common language spoken by refugees, and91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps.

The importation of Middle Eastern immigrants through the nation’s refugee program hasled to the development of pockets of radicalized communities throughout the United States." Immigration to Swell U.S. Muslim Population to 6.2 Million - Breitbart

 

[PoliticalChic]

7. “How long does this [torture] go on, Master Ping?”

He gave a fastidious small shrug. “Until the Subject perishes. It is, after all, called theDeathof a Thousand. But no one has ever died of dying, if you take my meaning. Therein lies my greatest art—the prolongation of that dying, and the ever increasing excruciation of it. To put it another way, no one has ever died of sheer pain. Even I am sometimes astonished at how much pain can be borne, and for how long.

Also, I was a physician before I became the Fondler, so I never inadvertently inflict a mortal injury, and I know how to prevent a Subject’s untimely death from blood loss or shock to his constitution. My assistant Blotters are adept at stanching blood flow and, if I am required to puncture a troublesome organ like the bladder, early on in the Fondling, my Retrievers are competent at replacing any plugs I have to take out.”

“To put it another way, then,” I said, mimicking his own words, “how long until the Subject perishes of those attentions?”

“It depends mainly on chance. On which of the folded papers, and in which order, chance puts into my hand. Do you believe in some god or gods, Lord Marco? Then presumably the gods regulate the papers’ chance according to the magnitude of the Subject’s crime and the severity of punishment it merits. Chance, or the gods, can guide my hand at any time to one of those four papers I earlier mentioned.”

He raised his thin eyebrows at me. I nodded and said:

“I think I have guessed. There must be four vital parts of the body where a wound would cause quick death instead of slow dying.”

But you still have not said how long the Fondling lasts.”

“Again, it depends, my Prince. Aside from the incalculable factors of gods and chance, the duration depends on me. If I am not overpressed by other Subjects waiting their turn, if I can proceed at leisure, I may take an hour between picking up one paper and the next. If I put in a respectable working day of, say, ten hours, and if chance dictates that we must go through almost every one of the thousand folded papers, then the Death of a Thousand can last for very near a hundred days.” Gary Jennings, "The Journeyer," p. 410-414


Now....that's torture....not Enhanced Interrogation, and not intense vetting.

Torture.

Are we clear?

 

[Searcher44]

"So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

Why did these "benign methods" result in the death of several detainees?

If the methods were not illegal torture why were so many detainees moved incognito around the world to "black sites"?

If waterboarding is not torture why has the U.S.A prosecuted perpertrators of this method in the past?

"Japanese soldiers other than the Class A war criminals were also prosecuted for mistreatment of American prisoners—and water torture “loomed large in the evidence presented against them.” For instance, at the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials in 1947, Yukio Asano, an interpreter, faced a charge of violating “the laws and customs of war” through these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."

Perhaps the most heinous aspect of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that the victims often turned out to be innocent and caught up in indiscriminate sweeps or turned in by revenge seeking informers.

.” He underwent the process 83 times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators, and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact, including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake, flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes

Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for 96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with “medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time” to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning” measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked “might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee “a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.
Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray
Janat Gul begged the CIA for death.
Delivered to the CIA in July 2004 by a foreign ally, Gul was thought to have intelligence about an attack on the US planned to take place ahead of the presidential election. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, authorized CIA director George Tenet to use all approved torture techniques on him save waterboarding. Soon he was hallucinating, seeing his family in the mirror.
A CIA cable recorded: Gul “asked to die, or just to be killed.”
There had been doubts about the intelligence justifying Gul’s capture even before the CIA had him in custody. One official said in March 2004 it was “vague” and “worthless in terms of actionable intelligence.” In August of that year, CIA officials at Gul’s detention site twice reported they did not think he was withholding information. But the response from headquarters was to continue torturing him, apparently out of fear of missing information on the threat.
By October 2004, Gul’s accuser recanted. It is unclear if that accuser gave up Gul in the first place after he was himself tortured. The CIA transferred Gul to an unknown foreign partner, and he was ultimately freed.
As Gul’s previously unknown case indicates, years of leaks and occasional official disclosures about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture efforts did not reveal a program as brutal, unaccountable and even chaotic as the one portrayed by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday. The committee’s report portrays a feedback loop: the CIA embraced torture, then failed to question and review its value.
“Having initially cited Gul’s knowledge of the pre-election threat, as reported by the CIA’s source, the CIA began representing that its enhanced interrogation techniques were required for Gul to deny the existence of the threat, thereby disproving the credibility of the CIA source,” the report found

Perhaps being from a different culture you can't comprehend how the rational western mind recoils in horror at such abuses. After more fully assimilating into your adopted culture you will grow a conscience.

P.S. There are hundreds more of these stories and much worse. If I have time I will continue posting them
I'm sure eventually your humanity will be activated, overcoming the social retardation inherited from your previous cultural deprivation.

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

Why did these "benign methods" result in the death of several detainees?

If the methods were not illegal torture why were so many detainees moved incognito around the world to "black sites"?

If waterboarding is not torture why has the U.S.A prosecuted perpertrators of this method in the past?

"Japanese soldiers other than the Class A war criminals were also prosecuted for mistreatment of American prisoners—and water torture “loomed large in the evidence presented against them.” For instance, at the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials in 1947, Yukio Asano, an interpreter, faced a charge of violating “the laws and customs of war” through these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."

Perhaps the most heinous aspect of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that the victims often turned out to be innocent and caught up in indiscriminate sweeps or turned in by revenge seeking informers.

.” He underwent the process 83 times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators, and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact, including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake, flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes

Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for 96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with “medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time” to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning” measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked “might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee “a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.
Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray
Janat Gul begged the CIA for death.
Delivered to the CIA in July 2004 by a foreign ally, Gul was thought to have intelligence about an attack on the US planned to take place ahead of the presidential election. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, authorized CIA director George Tenet to use all approved torture techniques on him save waterboarding. Soon he was hallucinating, seeing his family in the mirror.
A CIA cable recorded: Gul “asked to die, or just to be killed.”
There had been doubts about the intelligence justifying Gul’s capture even before the CIA had him in custody. One official said in March 2004 it was “vague” and “worthless in terms of actionable intelligence.” In August of that year, CIA officials at Gul’s detention site twice reported they did not think he was withholding information. But the response from headquarters was to continue torturing him, apparently out of fear of missing information on the threat.
By October 2004, Gul’s accuser recanted. It is unclear if that accuser gave up Gul in the first place after he was himself tortured. The CIA transferred Gul to an unknown foreign partner, and he was ultimately freed.
As Gul’s previously unknown case indicates, years of leaks and occasional official disclosures about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture efforts did not reveal a program as brutal, unaccountable and even chaotic as the one portrayed by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday. The committee’s report portrays a feedback loop: the CIA embraced torture, then failed to question and review its value.
“Having initially cited Gul’s knowledge of the pre-election threat, as reported by the CIA’s source, the CIA began representing that its enhanced interrogation techniques were required for Gul to deny the existence of the threat, thereby disproving the credibility of the CIA source,” the report found

Perhaps being from a different culture you can't comprehend how the rational western mind recoils in horror at such abuses. After more fully assimilating into your adopted culture you will grow a conscience.

P.S. There are hundreds more of these stories and much worse. If I have time I will continue posting them
I'm sure eventually your humanity will be activated, overcoming the social retardation inherited from your previous cultural deprivation.

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

 

[Searcher44]

"So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

Why did these "benign methods" result in the death of several detainees?

If the methods were not illegal torture why were so many detainees moved incognito around the world to "black sites"?

If waterboarding is not torture why has the U.S.A prosecuted perpertrators of this method in the past?

"Japanese soldiers other than the Class A war criminals were also prosecuted for mistreatment of American prisoners—and water torture “loomed large in the evidence presented against them.” For instance, at the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials in 1947, Yukio Asano, an interpreter, faced a charge of violating “the laws and customs of war” through these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."

Perhaps the most heinous aspect of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that the victims often turned out to be innocent and caught up in indiscriminate sweeps or turned in by revenge seeking informers.

.” He underwent the process 83 times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators, and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact, including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake, flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes

Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for 96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with “medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time” to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning” measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked “might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee “a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.
Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray
Janat Gul begged the CIA for death.
Delivered to the CIA in July 2004 by a foreign ally, Gul was thought to have intelligence about an attack on the US planned to take place ahead of the presidential election. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, authorized CIA director George Tenet to use all approved torture techniques on him save waterboarding. Soon he was hallucinating, seeing his family in the mirror.
A CIA cable recorded: Gul “asked to die, or just to be killed.”
There had been doubts about the intelligence justifying Gul’s capture even before the CIA had him in custody. One official said in March 2004 it was “vague” and “worthless in terms of actionable intelligence.” In August of that year, CIA officials at Gul’s detention site twice reported they did not think he was withholding information. But the response from headquarters was to continue torturing him, apparently out of fear of missing information on the threat.
By October 2004, Gul’s accuser recanted. It is unclear if that accuser gave up Gul in the first place after he was himself tortured. The CIA transferred Gul to an unknown foreign partner, and he was ultimately freed.
As Gul’s previously unknown case indicates, years of leaks and occasional official disclosures about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture efforts did not reveal a program as brutal, unaccountable and even chaotic as the one portrayed by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday. The committee’s report portrays a feedback loop: the CIA embraced torture, then failed to question and review its value.
“Having initially cited Gul’s knowledge of the pre-election threat, as reported by the CIA’s source, the CIA began representing that its enhanced interrogation techniques were required for Gul to deny the existence of the threat, thereby disproving the credibility of the CIA source,” the report found

Perhaps being from a different culture you can't comprehend how the rational western mind recoils in horror at such abuses. After more fully assimilating into your adopted culture you will grow a conscience.

P.S. There are hundreds more of these stories and much worse. If I have time I will continue posting them
I'm sure eventually your humanity will be activated, overcoming the social retardation inherited from your previous cultural deprivation.

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

Why did these "benign methods" result in the death of several detainees?

If the methods were not illegal torture why were so many detainees moved incognito around the world to "black sites"?

If waterboarding is not torture why has the U.S.A prosecuted perpertrators of this method in the past?

"Japanese soldiers other than the Class A war criminals were also prosecuted for mistreatment of American prisoners—and water torture “loomed large in the evidence presented against them.” For instance, at the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials in 1947, Yukio Asano, an interpreter, faced a charge of violating “the laws and customs of war” through these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."

Perhaps the most heinous aspect of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that the victims often turned out to be innocent and caught up in indiscriminate sweeps or turned in by revenge seeking informers.

.” He underwent the process 83 times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators, and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact, including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake, flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes

Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for 96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with “medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time” to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning” measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked “might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee “a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.
Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray
Janat Gul begged the CIA for death.
Delivered to the CIA in July 2004 by a foreign ally, Gul was thought to have intelligence about an attack on the US planned to take place ahead of the presidential election. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, authorized CIA director George Tenet to use all approved torture techniques on him save waterboarding. Soon he was hallucinating, seeing his family in the mirror.
A CIA cable recorded: Gul “asked to die, or just to be killed.”
There had been doubts about the intelligence justifying Gul’s capture even before the CIA had him in custody. One official said in March 2004 it was “vague” and “worthless in terms of actionable intelligence.” In August of that year, CIA officials at Gul’s detention site twice reported they did not think he was withholding information. But the response from headquarters was to continue torturing him, apparently out of fear of missing information on the threat.
By October 2004, Gul’s accuser recanted. It is unclear if that accuser gave up Gul in the first place after he was himself tortured. The CIA transferred Gul to an unknown foreign partner, and he was ultimately freed.
As Gul’s previously unknown case indicates, years of leaks and occasional official disclosures about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture efforts did not reveal a program as brutal, unaccountable and even chaotic as the one portrayed by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday. The committee’s report portrays a feedback loop: the CIA embraced torture, then failed to question and review its value.
“Having initially cited Gul’s knowledge of the pre-election threat, as reported by the CIA’s source, the CIA began representing that its enhanced interrogation techniques were required for Gul to deny the existence of the threat, thereby disproving the credibility of the CIA source,” the report found

Perhaps being from a different culture you can't comprehend how the rational western mind recoils in horror at such abuses. After more fully assimilating into your adopted culture you will grow a conscience.

P.S. There are hundreds more of these stories and much worse. If I have time I will continue posting them
I'm sure eventually your humanity will be activated, overcoming the social retardation inherited from your previous cultural deprivation.

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

 

[Searcher44]

"So much control that they used language as a cudgel to restrict the Bush administration's attempt gain valuable information from captured Islamic terrorists.
The attempt used benign methods, none of which could actually be called 'torture.'

Why did these "benign methods" result in the death of several detainees?

If the methods were not illegal torture why were so many detainees moved incognito around the world to "black sites"?

If waterboarding is not torture why has the U.S.A prosecuted perpertrators of this method in the past?

"Japanese soldiers other than the Class A war criminals were also prosecuted for mistreatment of American prisoners—and water torture “loomed large in the evidence presented against them.” For instance, at the Yokohama Class B and C War Crimes Trials in 1947, Yukio Asano, an interpreter, faced a charge of violating “the laws and customs of war” through these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils."

Perhaps the most heinous aspect of these "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that the victims often turned out to be innocent and caught up in indiscriminate sweeps or turned in by revenge seeking informers.

.” He underwent the process 83 times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators, and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact, including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake, flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes

Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for 96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with “medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time” to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning” measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked “might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee “a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.
Shocking cases in CIA report reveal an American torture program in disarray
Janat Gul begged the CIA for death.
Delivered to the CIA in July 2004 by a foreign ally, Gul was thought to have intelligence about an attack on the US planned to take place ahead of the presidential election. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, authorized CIA director George Tenet to use all approved torture techniques on him save waterboarding. Soon he was hallucinating, seeing his family in the mirror.
A CIA cable recorded: Gul “asked to die, or just to be killed.”
There had been doubts about the intelligence justifying Gul’s capture even before the CIA had him in custody. One official said in March 2004 it was “vague” and “worthless in terms of actionable intelligence.” In August of that year, CIA officials at Gul’s detention site twice reported they did not think he was withholding information. But the response from headquarters was to continue torturing him, apparently out of fear of missing information on the threat.
By October 2004, Gul’s accuser recanted. It is unclear if that accuser gave up Gul in the first place after he was himself tortured. The CIA transferred Gul to an unknown foreign partner, and he was ultimately freed.
As Gul’s previously unknown case indicates, years of leaks and occasional official disclosures about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture efforts did not reveal a program as brutal, unaccountable and even chaotic as the one portrayed by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday. The committee’s report portrays a feedback loop: the CIA embraced torture, then failed to question and review its value.
“Having initially cited Gul’s knowledge of the pre-election threat, as reported by the CIA’s source, the CIA began representing that its enhanced interrogation techniques were required for Gul to deny the existence of the threat, thereby disproving the credibility of the CIA source,” the report found

Perhaps being from a different culture you can't comprehend how the rational western mind recoils in horror at such abuses. After more fully assimilating into your adopted culture you will grow a conscience.

P.S. There are hundreds more of these stories and much worse. If I have time I will continue posting them
I'm sure eventually your humanity will be activated, overcoming the social retardation inherited from your previous cultural deprivation.

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

 

[Searcher44]

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

P.S. I wish I found this before I posted my reply which includes that comment on Alan Dershowitz you may have already seen. I was looking further into the ticking bomb scenario when I serendipitously ran across this video on Youtube. My guess is we both had mistaken ideas about his exact stand on torture, at least I know I thought he was more pro-torture in more situations than he is. It turns out if he still holds the same opinions expressed in this two yr. old video I have to cast off a few of my negative assumptions about him. How about you? Is there anything he says here that surprises you? Please don't tell me your quote was a purposely misleading out-of-context ploy cynically designed to misrepresent a respected legal scholar's judgement of the morality of torture? I feel mislead, and stupid - feel free to use the latter excuse, that old saying about assumptions making an ass......



Torture Warrant - Alan Dershowitz Solution to the Ticking-Bomb Scenario

 

[PoliticalChic]

A Liberal canard.

Now for the truth.

1. Waterboarding is considered by many on the left to be torture only because it occurred during the hated Bush administration.

Had it occurred during the Obama administration it would be lauded as an "effective, non-lethal, humane information gathering technique".


2. The Japanese used to perform experimental operations on downed American pilots. They performed these operations without using any type of anesthesia. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....


3. When they waterboarded, they would cane the prisoner's belly while he was being waterboarded. This apparently increased the level of pain and panic exponentially. These are not--in kind or in degree--the same offenses that the Americans are charged with....agree. To be clear to everybody, what the Japanese were doing was like the Americans only in the sense that:
- folks were tied on a board
- there was water.

The basic Japanese approach was to force ingestion of large amounts of water, then beat your distended stomach, causing pain and rupture of organs.

It was not the mental panic approach that we call waterboarding today.


4. Thank you for allowing me to point out the difference between waterboarding we do and waterboarding done by the Japanese...
Althouse: Americans think the Bush adminstration used torture.

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

Now, focus like a laser....
Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.

 

[NYcarbineer]

So, has anyone called vetting 'torture' yet?

It's a big internet, surely you can find someone.

 

[Searcher44]

Thank you for pointing out that the Japanese torturers during WW11 were even more brutal than American torturers have been during the War on Terror. I hope that factoid doesn't surprise too many people, although I also suspect that it probably dismays some of the more vicious rw'ers on these forums.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State ; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. (Details from Wikipedia)
Besides having undergone waterboarding himself Malcolm says he has personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
An online article leaves no doubt as to whether this expert thinks Waterboarding is torture or not.
I'm going to quote it in full because I think everybody should have his opinion (being an expert and all) and not just your opinion which, let's be honest, is based on pure ignorance.

"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."
Maybe you've read Christopher Hitchen's account of being waterboarded in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair, he almost word for word asserts the same thing.(I still love Hitch even though 9/11 drove him along with a few other prominent lefties much too far to the dark side.)

Anyway Malcolm's article continues.....

"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."

I'm curious how you will still maintain and defend your position that the Americanized "kinder gentler" technique of waterboarding is not torture.
I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

Now, focus like a laser....
Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.

Sheesh, is abjure your word of the day or something? Abjure: a formal verb, meaning - solemnly renounce (a belief, cause, or claim) Okay, I get it, you abjure all the answers, explanations, truth, evidence, facts I've piled up in your path and you're just going to stand there and repeat the same post over and over again until I tire, stop surgically dismantling your pile of bleep and hopefully go away before anybody notices I've rendered you catatonically speechless. Well you win, I abjure this one way conversation. Feel free to keep repeating that post like a mantra though if it eases your stress. And don't worry about that "assigning ignorance" business. Your posts have won you the whole pile of that too, no contest. I abjure all rights to any of it.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

Now, focus like a laser....
Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.

Sheesh, is abjure your word of the day or something? Abjure: a formal verb, meaning - solemnly renounce (a belief, cause, or claim) Okay, I get it, you abjure all the answers, explanations, truth, evidence, facts I've piled up in your path and you're just going to stand there and repeat the same post over and over again until I tire, stop surgically dismantling your pile of bleep and hopefully go away before anybody notices I've rendered you catatonically speechless. Well you win, I abjure this one way conversation. Feel free to keep repeating that post like a mantra though if it eases your stress. And don't worry about that "assigning ignorance" business. Your posts have won you the whole pile of that too, no contest. I abjure all rights to any of it.

She got a Thesaurus for Christmas a few years ago,

and she's back to the 'A's' again.

 

[PoliticalChic]

And now for another chuckle relating Liberals and torture.....

1. 1. How about the Liberal hysteria about the CIA treatment of terrorist detainees at Gitmo, compared with the response to Damian Williams smashing a cinder block on Reginald Denny’s head during the LA Riots, causing permanent brain damage, an following it up with a victory dance around Denny’s body…The L.A. Riots: 15 Years After Rodney King - TIME But Liberal Democrat Maxine Waters defended Williams, saying “the anger in my district is a righteous anger” and “I’m just as angry as they are!” Chilling Video: Openly Rooting for Revolution, The Left Calls For American Civil Unrest & Riots (Frances Fox Piven, Lib Talkers, Journalists, Van Jones, Rev Wright, English Protest Leader, etc)
   2. One of the “torture” methods was to place a caterpillar in the cell! http://www.unc.edu/~nahuja/Ahuja - ST Abu Zubaydah.pdf

 

[NYcarbineer]

And now for another chuckle relating Liberals and torture.....

1. 1. How about the Liberal hysteria about the CIA treatment of terrorist detainees at Gitmo, compared with the response to Damian Williams smashing a cinder block on Reginald Denny’s head during the LA Riots, causing permanent brain damage, an following it up with a victory dance around Denny’s body…The L.A. Riots: 15 Years After Rodney King - TIME But Liberal Democrat Maxine Waters defended Williams, saying “the anger in my district is a righteous anger” and “I’m just as angry as they are!” Chilling Video: Openly Rooting for Revolution, The Left Calls For American Civil Unrest & Riots (Frances Fox Piven, Lib Talkers, Journalists, Van Jones, Rev Wright, English Protest Leader, etc)
   2. One of the “torture” methods was to place a caterpillar in the cell! http://www.unc.edu/~nahuja/Ahuja - ST Abu Zubaydah.pdf

Damian Williams got ten years.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Don't stop there, Liberal!!!

Let's get to the really, really, REALLY vicious stuff the Bush folks did simply to save innocent Americans from having to jump out of 102 story building that were on fire:

. Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."
"Medical officers are required to ensure adequate fluid and nutritional intake, and frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing dietary manipulation."


The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!




Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals.

I know your opinion on Liberals, what I was expecting was your thoughts on this fellow Malcolm Nance,

".. a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, (who knows) waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(He has) personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. (And says)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.

Your opinion on whether waterboarding is torture (and mine too for that matter, although I have done a lot of research on the subject, maybe you have too) anyway your opinion is based on ignorance as I said. He obviously is an expert with sound credentials in the American armed forces and has personal knowledge on torture techniques. You dodged his whole testimony. Why?

Your P.S. Seems to be a non sequitur to my post;

"Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)
"This technique involves the substitution of commercial liquid meal replacements for normal food, presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing, but nutritionally complete diet."

"The horror!! The horror!!!!!!!!
Gads, you Liberals are disgusting individuals."

But it did remind me of this;

CIA operatives subjected at least five detainees to what they called “rectal rehydration and feeding”, a medical practice applied with extreme rarity and known more colloquially as a nutrient enema, according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.
The CIA forced the nutrient enemas on two detainees who attempted hunger strikes, a third who “partially refus[ed] liquids”, a fourth “without a determination of medical need”, and a fifth whose case details are not divulged.
Agency operatives had explicitly considered other methods of force-feeding, the report shows, but opted to subject detainees to rectal infusions at least in part because its officers considered them “a means of behavior control”. One medical officer wrote that “[w]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal of ending the water refusal.”
According to the report, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward-facing position … with head lower than torso”, at which point the enema began. An officer described the procedure as “regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines … [what] I infer is that you get a tube up as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.” An officer also wrote: “We used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a detainee who has confessed to being the architect of 9/11, the CIA’s chief interrogator ordered rectal feeding “without a determination of medical need”. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Maid Khan received nutrient enemas after brief hunger strikes, and Abu Zubaydah after he “partially refus[ed] liquids”. At least three other detainees were threatened with rectal rehydration.
Rectal feeding was once considered a legitimate medical procedure. But it is far less safe and efficient than intravenous and tube systems, and so it fell out of use in medical settings in the first half of the 20th century. Nutrient enemas carry greater risks than IV support, including damage to the rectum and colon; food that rots inside the patient’s digestive tract; and an inflamed or prolapsed rectum from careless insertion of the feeding tube.
CIA records showed at least one detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal prolapse after a rectal infusion. The Senate report also found that CIA leadership was notified of allegations that rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”.

I ended my post with this;

"I want to add that one of the sadder aspects of Cheney and Bush's "enhanced interrogation" is how the policy led to the degradation and dehumanization of those poor dumb soldiers below officer rank who were actually prosecuted for their "abuse" of Iraqi and Afghani detainees. Detainees a large number of whom were innocent, handed over to the Americans by corrupt and greedy warlords for the bounty offered by Coalition Authorities. I will add a post to this thread detailing this horrible and heart-breaking aspect of the war on terror. That post will also remind everyone that Cheney and Bush made sure that they themselves received immunity from any possible prosecution or culpability their "enhanced interrogation" programs might inspire.

I'll try to add more info on the more brutal aspects of the " Dietary Manipulation (Bradbury memo, May 10, 2005)" you tout at the end of your post.

I live in NYC.
I drove through a flutter of paper from the towers on 9/11.

Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.


"The laws must be changed to permit democracies to fight fairly and effectively against those who threaten its citizens. To paraphrase Robert Jackson, who served as the United States chief prosecutor at Nuremberg - the law must not be "a suicide pact".

Alan M Dershowitz is Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, £15.99)

No doubt you've heard this story, usually involving George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is attending a grand dinner party. Sitting next to him is a rather haughty french Countess. This seating was slightly disagreeable because Shaw was notorious for holding the French in contempt . At some point during a lull in the mealtime conversation he turns to the Grande Dame and says "Madame, would you sleep with me for one million pounds?" She glances at her dinner partner with a coy smile, turns to Shaw and says "Certainement Mr. Shaw!" GBS seems to contemplate this answer for a moment and then says "Madame would you sleep with me for ten pounds?" With a suddenly reddening face she replies "Certainement pas Mr. Shaw! What do you think I am?" He replies back to her with his always charming smile, "We've already established that Madam, now we have to agree on a price."

You've basically presented me with what I call "the Jack Bauer Ticking Time-bomb hypothesis". It's a common argument even among serious Philosophers although they leave out Bauer, but I was a huge fan of "24". It's a hypothetical event that is so implausible I'm not going to get dragged too deeply into it. Hopefully you gathered that my telling of that probably apocryphal story about GBS is a partial reply - if you're willing to give up America's moral exceptionalism (hard earned, life by life, generation by generation over centuries) for the possibility of saving 3,000 lives would 300 lives, or 30 lives, lead to the same moral choice? Believe me although some might make fun of the ticking time-bomb scenario I'm not going to do that here. The moral dilemma can be compared to asking a father (which I am) "If your daughter was kidnapped by a known pedophile murderer and you had access to a person who knew her whereabouts how far would you go, what would you be willing to do to him to get that information?" Myself I would answer there would be no limit to what I would do. And with that answer I would have to accept the consequences of my actions because without laws you don't have a country to protect. (Donald Trump likes to say that about borders, there are several components that make up a viable nation, laws and borders are two of them). You mention Alan Dershowitz. His quote says laws have to be changed. A civil society must be willing to have that argument but it must be willing to obey the law in the meantime. I don't know if it was in the book you quote but I believe at some point Dershowitz even suggested "torture warrants". (He's another liberal who disappointed me to some degree with his shuffle to the right after 9/11, along with Christopher Hitchens who I already mentioned) And your post mentions Robert Jackson. I always love being handed the opportunity to present one of my favorite quotes in history...."To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Torture would certainly be included in my list of the accumulated evils of Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.

Now, focus like a laser....
Put aside your hand-wringing for a moment of hypothetical consideration and tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.
Then we'll assign ignorance.

Sheesh, is abjure your word of the day or something? Abjure: a formal verb, meaning - solemnly renounce (a belief, cause, or claim) Okay, I get it, you abjure all the answers, explanations, truth, evidence, facts I've piled up in your path and you're just going to stand there and repeat the same post over and over again until I tire, stop surgically dismantling your pile of bleep and hopefully go away before anybody notices I've rendered you catatonically speechless. Well you win, I abjure this one way conversation. Feel free to keep repeating that post like a mantra though if it eases your stress. And don't worry about that "assigning ignorance" business. Your posts have won you the whole pile of that too, no contest. I abjure all rights to any of it.

.... tell me what methods you would abjure if they could have prevented the tragedy of that day.


Cat got your tongue?