Whoops! CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

I guess I'll simply never understand why so many want the USA to be the bad guy.

I understand that we are not Lilly white innocent, but we are far far above and beyond our extremist Muslim enemies today.

says the ironic, ethnocentric asshole who would shit his diaper the minute he discovered an American Soldier being waterboarded by muslims.

:roflleyes:

Did some sergeant bust your ass one too many times or is it simply that you never wore a uniform? There has to be some reason you are such a stupid fuck with no respect. Not that I want any from stupid fucks. Just wondering.

You do not know me nor will you ever see me telling war stories. Stories are for children and morons. I was exactly what I have always said, simply a Sergeant. You like to talk shit so go ahead, I can sit here and laugh at your stupidity for months on end.

Muslims don't water board, they simply dismember. Think about it.
 
Of course you don't consider it torture. You knew damn well that the guy pouring water in your face would stop the second you started to squirm. Now, mancow, do you think you'd feel the same way if a person like me were pouring water in your face?

(((Ho Hum YAWN)))) You just stick to your little liberal world and leave the fighting for this nation us real men and women. Don't worry...you will still be able to spew your anti-war stuff on the board here...free speech is a wonderful thing isn't it?
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmfbOwRreU]YouTube - cluster bombs[/ame]

*yawn*, indeed. I take it you had nothing of value to retort with and such is why you thought flag waving some military would work just as well.

well, I guess they don't pay you silly fucking meat heads to think, eh?

and yes, free speech is wonderful. Thankfully, it's the Constitution and not your enlistment which protects it, thanks anyway.

:thup:

Actually, without those who choose to serve, you wouldn't have the constitution. The constitution may protect your freedom of speech; But it is the US Military that protects the Constitution.

Please thank a Veteran today.
 
Here's the other more logical response to your non sensical cut and paste job....

Prove waterboarding is torture. Not a single person has been charged with torture during the war on terrorism.

From its use in the Spanish Inquisition to Nazi Germany and warring Japan to North Korea and the Khmer Rouge, waterboarding has always been classified as torture.

Here's a brief history lesson on waterboarding's exceptionless consideration as torture from a JAG: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...0201170_2.html

Most importantly, it clearly meets the definitions of torture outlined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified (making it according to Article VI of the Constitution, "the supreme law of the land") and Ronald Reagan proudly endorsed.

Ronald Reagan said:
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

The basis of your argument is that if a crime is not prosecuted, it is not a crime. That's entirely specious, by your rationale anyone who gets away with murder must not have done anything wrong.

Waterboarding is torture and torture is a crime, whether the government has the balls to uphold the law and prosecute those responsible for it or not. Crimes just don't cease to be because of judicial inaction.
 
You are very welcome.
although I did not choose to serve.

But you didn't hide from it either. Just as much a Veteran as any other.

I was darned tempted. and for a few years regretted not going to Canada. Now it does not matter much either way. time does that. The nightmares stop eventually.

I still do not like the military. Although I do support the troops. I worked with troubled / physically disabled Iraq vets for a couple of years. It actually helped me to finally resolve some issues I still had lingering in the background.
I did positive things in their lives as well. I still invite em all over for a July 4th cook out each year.
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

If we can't believe him now, doesn't that mean we can't believe what he said then?
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

If we can't believe him now, doesn't that mean we can't believe what he said then?

That would be about right.
 
Please continue...your making a jackass out of yourself and you don't even know it! :lol:

...says the Engrish Proff meat bag whose entire last page of forum input amounts to, "No! please don't make me compare my pussified experience with an actual effort to waterboard someone! PLEEAAAZZZEEE!"



:lol:


go do what you are paid to do, fodder, and do some situps or something.

What is it with your obsession with waterboarding...are you some sort of sado/masochist?

You making a jackass out of yourself in front of thousands who read this forum is priceless entertainment. Please continue...

Thanks Gunny...this "shogun" clown is hilarious.

I'm not the one in danger of using it as if it's an acceptable form of torture, meatbag. Maybe your kind can stop pretending that it's not torture so we can go ahead and take the option off of the table along with Iron Maidens and Red Hot Eye Gougers.



good fucking grief, noobtoast. You sure do act like a giant pussy given the big brave bravado you bragged about when undergoing your "ok, you can stop now" waterboarding.

:lol:
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

At least be honest and call it what it is: torture.
 
I guess I'll simply never understand why so many want the USA to be the bad guy.

I understand that we are not Lilly white innocent, but we are far far above and beyond our extremist Muslim enemies today.

says the ironic, ethnocentric asshole who would shit his diaper the minute he discovered an American Soldier being waterboarded by muslims.

:roflleyes:

Did some sergeant bust your ass one too many times or is it simply that you never wore a uniform? There has to be some reason you are such a stupid fuck with no respect. Not that I want any from stupid fucks. Just wondering.

You do not know me nor will you ever see me telling war stories. Stories are for children and morons. I was exactly what I have always said, simply a Sergeant. You like to talk shit so go ahead, I can sit here and laugh at your stupidity for months on end.

Muslims don't water board, they simply dismember. Think about it.


Wearing a uniform means two things: jack and shit. Lord knows it's no reason to automatically respect some nursing home predator like yourself, by a long shot. Maybe you started to feel that we civvies should kiss your ass and worship the ground you step on but I guess that's why you've been relegated to diaper duty instead of displaying how sharp the military hones your edge.

We are both laughing then, you fucking full metal jacket wannabe. I'll give you a few days to let that sink into the cromagnon skull sitting on your shoulders.

and AMERICANS don't torture, motherfucker. YOU think about it. We brought charges against Japs for this shit and your kind are too fucking stupid, and too busy insisting your shit don't stink, to comprehend the necessity of a moral high ground here. But hey, Uday, go ahead and tell me what is acceptable and what isn't when you just NEED some info.
 
(((Ho Hum YAWN)))) You just stick to your little liberal world and leave the fighting for this nation us real men and women. Don't worry...you will still be able to spew your anti-war stuff on the board here...free speech is a wonderful thing isn't it?
YouTube - cluster bombs

*yawn*, indeed. I take it you had nothing of value to retort with and such is why you thought flag waving some military would work just as well.

well, I guess they don't pay you silly fucking meat heads to think, eh?

and yes, free speech is wonderful. Thankfully, it's the Constitution and not your enlistment which protects it, thanks anyway.

:thup:

Actually, without those who choose to serve, you wouldn't have the constitution. The constitution may protect your freedom of speech; But it is the US Military that protects the Constitution.

Please thank a Veteran today.

That sure is the talking point, now isn't it. Maybe you should thank a civvie for putting your ass to work.
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

At least be honest and call it what it is: torture.

oh no... Sonofabitch first Class insists that it's just "Enhanced Measures". See how that works?
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

At least be honest and call it what it is: torture.

oh no... Sonofabitch first Class insists that it's just "Enhanced Measures". See how that works?

It's jargon. It's a way of making something abhorant sound...benign. Like friendly fire. It's impossible to have an honest discussion on whether or not it should be used if you can't even be honest enough to call it what it is.
 
At least be honest and call it what it is: torture.

oh no... Sonofabitch first Class insists that it's just "Enhanced Measures". See how that works?

It's jargon. It's a way of making something abhorant sound...benign. Like friendly fire. It's impossible to have an honest discussion on whether or not it should be used if you can't even be honest enough to call it what it is.

You see coyote that's where so many of us disagree. It is torture to force water into someones stomach and then beat their stomachs, Which is what the Japanese did during WW2. We place our own troops under water boarding as a matter of training. And it is not as easy as some people want you to believe. They cannot quit after a few seconds. I have never done it as I was not Special Forces. But I have friends who were special forces and I'm glad there are men like them out there. Because I'll admit I sure as hell do not want to go through what they do.
 
We used water boarding on 3 people. Supposedly we received some valuable information from them that probably saved American lives. At the time it was sanctioned by the Government, now it isn't. I don't know about this former agent and why he would lie. Obviously we cannot believe anything he says now.

I believe that we were justified in the use of enhanced measures, and I believe they were only used when it was thought that lives could be saved.

At least be honest and call it what it is: torture.

oh no... Sonofabitch first Class insists that it's just "Enhanced Measures". See how that works?


Sticks and stone may break my bones but your candy ass will never affect me. You can talk down to me and talk about me all you like. I've been called worse. And I've been called much better. I do have to wonder how many of your liberal friends share your hatred for our military. I know one thing for certain. You weren't worth it.
 
a cia opertive lies about lying....shoclking.......they are spies.....question them.... torture them....shoot them at dawn....
 
You see coyote that's where so many of us disagree. It is torture to force water into someones stomach and then beat their stomachs, Which is what the Japanese did during WW2. We place our own troops under water boarding as a matter of training. And it is not as easy as some people want you to believe. They cannot quit after a few seconds. I have never done it as I was not Special Forces. But I have friends who were special forces and I'm glad there are men like them out there. Because I'll admit I sure as hell do not want to go through what they do.

We place our own special forces under water boarding at SERE training BECAUSE it's torture.

The Koreans waterboarded captured POWs in order to force false confessions out of them for use in their propaganda. We recognized the inhumanity of it then, and when the North Vietnamese used the Communist Chinese's favorite form of torture on John McCain and other POWs in the Vietnam war. Everyone in the world, even the Koreans and Vietnamese, knew it was torture and called it as such.

So we developed a program for the elite to help them resist the torture if they were ever captured by the enemy and tortured to denounce the US. Using the fact that the SERE program uses waterboarding as a defense of why waterboarding isn't torture is to have no understanding of its history or purpose.

Again, here's what Malcolm Nance, a "former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) who underwent and trained in the waterboarding technique (in order to teach U.S. soldiers how to endure captivity at the hands of waterboarders such as Al Qaeda)" had to say about it:

Former Chief of Training at SERE said:
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.

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. . . .

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. . . .

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.

To get some context on this from as much of an expert on waterboarding as there is on the planet today, I'll provide the full text of Nance's explanation that there is absolutely, positively, no question whatsoever nor has there ever been that waterboarding is torture:

At his website, where he usually discusses anti-insurgent strategy and military tactics, Nance felt compelled to address this false, recently conjured debate on whether something defined for the last 500 years as torture, that meets every established criteria of torture, is in fact torture.

Waterboarding is Torture… Period

We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.

Scarborough said, "For those who don't know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …" He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it's okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say 'yes.'” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: "You know, that's the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don't want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure."

In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required 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 used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

History’s Lessons Ignored

Before arriving for my assignment at SERE, I traveled to Cambodia to visit the torture camps of the Khmer Rouge. The country had just opened for tourism and the effect of the genocide was still heavy in the air. I wanted to know how real torturers and terror camp guards would behave and learn how to resist them from survivors of such horrors. I had previously visited the Nazi death camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I had met and interviewed survivors of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Magdeburg when I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. However, it was in the S-21 death camp known as Tuol Sleng, in downtown Phnom Penh, where I found a perfectly intact inclined waterboard. Next to it was the painting on how it was used. It was cruder than ours mainly because they used metal shackles to strap the victim down, and a tin flower pot sprinkler to regulate the water flow rate, but it was the same device I would be subjected to a few weeks later.

On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. 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.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown 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 which 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 black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.

3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives. The Small Wars Council had a spirited discussion about this earlier in the year, especially when former Marine Generals Krulak and Hoar rejected all arguments for torture.

Evan Wallach wrote a brilliant history of the use of waterboarding as a war crime and the open acceptance of it by the administration in an article for Columbia Journal for Transnational Law. In it he describes how the ideological Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo validated the current dilemma we find ourselves in by asserting that the President had powers above and beyond the Constitution and the Congress:

“Congress doesn’t have the power to tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique....It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.”

That is an astounding assertion. It reflects a basic disregard for the law of the United States, the Constitution and basic moral decency.

Another MSNBC commentator defended the administration and stated that waterboarding is "not a new phenomenon" and that it had "been pinned on President Bush … but this has been part of interrogation for years and years and years." He is correct, but only partially. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that it was mainly America’s enemies that used it as a principal interrogation method. After World War 2, Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes. In Vietnam, service members were placed under investigation when a photo of a field-expedient waterboarding became publicly known.

Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.

I concur strongly with the opinions of professional interrogators like Colonel Stewart Herrington, and victims of torture like Senator John McCain. If you want consistent, accurate and reliable intelligence, be inquisitive, analytical, patient but most of all professional, amiable and compassionate.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?

What next if the waterboarding on a critical the captive doesn’t work and you have a timetable to stop the “ticking bomb” scenario? Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive’s children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information. All claimed the same need to stop the ticking bomb. It is not a far leap from torture to murder, especially if the subject is defiant. Are we willing to trade our nation’s soul for tactical intelligence?

Is There a Place for the Waterboard?

Yes. The waterboard must go back to the realm of SERE training our operators, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. We must now double our efforts to prepare for its inevitable and uncontrolled use of by our future enemies.

Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora’s box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.

Not A Fair Trade for America’s Honor

I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation’s core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.

This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here.

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.

Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle need to stand up for American values and clearly specify that coercive interrogation using the waterboard is torture and, except for limited examples of training our service members and intelligence officers, it should be stopped completely and finally –oh, and this time without a Presidential signing statement reinterpreting the law.
 
If those who support torture support it, okay. But at least have the integrity to call it what it is and not mask it in plainly dishonest Orwellian doublespeak.
 

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