Imagine having a plastic bag put over your head with your hands tied behind you. You are allowed to use up all the oxygen inside of the plastic bag. You experience exactly what it is like to die from suffocation. Then, after your are unconscious, the bag is pulled off of your head and you are revived. When you have recovered sufficiently, they do it again. And again. And again.
The only difference between the plastic bag treatment and waterborading is that, in waterboarding, a water-soaked rag is substituted for the plastic bag.
To me, that is torture.
One of the most popular forms of torture used in the Korean war was forced stress positions, combined with sleep deprvation. One variation involved 12 hours hanging from the ceiling, with one leg extended out at a 90 degree angle and the other leg barely touching the floor. At the end of the 12 hours, you were taken down and made to lie on a mat with a bright light shining directly in your eyes. Two guards sat on either side of you and slapped your face with wooden paddles when you started to go to sleep. That lasted for another 12 hours. Then you were tied to the ceiling again. This could go on continuously for as long as a week.
To me that is torture.
I realize there are a lot of macho studs here who like to pound their Internet chests, bellowing that something like this is not torture. Why not be honest about it? Why not admit that it's torture, but that you are in favor of doing it? You would gain much more credibility if you approached it in that fashion.
As it is now, you impress me as being disingernous jerks.
Its the same story every time. As long as we are doing it to someone else, it is not torture, but when they turn around and do it to our guys, we are outraged. We have now broken through a ceiling, showing the entire world that we were torturing detainees. Add to the conversation idiots like Cheney who said...."I would do it again..." and you are endangering every soldier in the field and probably signing the death warrant of anyone who is captive at this point.
The methods of torture will escalate now. DICK and his warped sense of right and wrong have now shown the world that we are no better than anyone else. Can't you people see that?
What I can see is the Democrats in the Senate with the approval of the Commander in Chief are making headlines for political reasons about what happened 10 or 11 years ago. Does anyone in their right mind think that the US should humble themselves before bastards that cut off the heads of someone just because they can? I would like to see everyone of these jihadist bastards tortured for a month before they are sent to the land of 72 virgins.
Stupid reasoning. Why do you suppose they cut off heads?
Probably because they are having entire families killed by a drone attack. Why would they give a rats ass about a few of their kind being water boarded 10 years ago? Many of these bastards weren't even in their teens when that happened.