Memo From Reality Based Community

[Orange_Juice]

Waterboarding Is Torture

This week, at his confirmation hearing, Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general-designate, did not hesitate to express a clear view. He noted that waterboarding had been used to torment prisoners during the Inquisition, by the Japanese in World War II and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

“We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam,” Mr. Holder said. “Waterboarding is torture.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/politics/17detain.html?th&emc=th

 

[alan1]

Waterboarding Is Torture




http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/politics/17detain.html?th&emc=th

Oh My Gosh.
The NY Times said it, it must be true.

 

[Orange_Juice]

Oh My Gosh.
The NY Times said it, it must be true.

Actually, the incomming Attorney General said it

 

[alan1]

Actually, the incomming Attorney General said it

That makes it all better.

 

[Old Rocks]

More importantly, he pointed out legal precidents for prosecuting those who ordered such actions.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Ummm......The Dark Lord of the Sith Cheney even admitted it......

Cheney admits he ‘signed off’ on waterboarding of three Guantanamo prisoners
By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Dec 29, 2008, 00:17

Author’s note: Cheney’s admission during an interview with the Washington Times last week about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called “enhanced interrogation” of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.

“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.

Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That’s it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping -- actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.

“I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney said of what he called the “enhanced interrogation” of the detainees. “I thought the [administration’s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.”

Cheney also took issue with the notion that waterboarding was torture.

“Was it torture? I don’t believe it was torture,” Cheney said. “The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.”

Other experts, including some military and intelligence interrogators, have disputed Cheney’s claims of success in extracting reliable information through waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Much of the confessed information turned out to be dubious or incorrect.

The first case

Zubaydah was the first “war on terror” detainee to be subjected to the Bush administration’s waterboarding, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, news reports and several books written about the Bush administration’s interrogation methods.

However, according to author Ron Suskind who interviewed CIA and other insiders, Abu Zubaydah was not the “high-value detainee” that the Bush administration had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind wrote in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.

Nevertheless, Suskind said President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about pending terrorist plots against the United States.

“Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the president and vice president,” Suskind wrote.

But Bush did not want to “lose face” because he had stated Zubaydah’s importance publicly, according to Suskind.

Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of U.S. targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yet, Suskind wrote, Zubaydah’s information under duress was judged not credible.

Still, that did not stop “thousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each . . . target,” Suskind wrote. “The United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

Cheney unapologetic

Cheney admits he ‘signed off’ on waterboarding of three Guantanamo prisoners

Cheney admitted to it in an interview with the Washington Times, as well as admitted it on several news shows during interviews.

Try again Bat Boy, there WAS torture involved.

 

[toomuchtime_]

Waterboarding Is Torture




http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/us/politics/17detain.html?th&emc=th

Just what aspect of water boarding makes it torture? Water boarding produces no physical pain or damage; it aims to produce an intense anxiety reaction in the prisoner. So is it torture because it induces anxiety? Is it torture because it requires the prisoner be restrained?

 

[Orange_Juice]

Just what aspect of water boarding makes it torture? Water boarding produces no physical pain or damage; it aims to produce an intense anxiety reaction in the prisoner. So is it torture because it induces anxiety? Is it torture because it requires the prisoner be restrained?

Ya, its a walk in the park. I mean are you listening to yourself?

BTW, sleep deprevation is torture, too. And there is not physical punishment involved in that but its horrible torture

And...are you saying the Japanese that tortured opur troops with waterboarding were wrongfully convicted?

 

[toomuchtime_]

Ya, its a walk in the park. I mean are you listening to yourself?

BTW, sleep deprevation is torture, too. And there is not physical punishment involved in that but its horrible torture

And...are you saying the Japanese that tortured opur troops with waterboarding were wrongfully convicted?

Your response seems to be that although you have strong feelings about water boarding, you have no idea what aspect of it makes you think it is torture.

 

[Old Rocks]

Toomuchtime, you apparently do not know a thing about what you are talking about.


Most healthcare professionals will probably never come across a patient who has been subjected to waterboarding, the term used to describe a CIA interrogation technique heatedly debated in recent months by U.S. government officials. But victims who have been waterboarded in the past say the technique causes severe physical pain and often long-lasting psychological stress.

On Feb. 5, the CIA said three suspected al-Qaida terrorists were subjected to waterboarding to gain information about future acts of terrorism following 9/11, according to a story in the Feb. 6 Wall Street Journal. The controversy over waterboarding centers on whether the interrogation technique is a form of torture. Torture is illegal according to U.S. laws. The Bush administration claims waterboarding is not a form of torture because it leaves no physical marks. However, experts on torture, many ethicists, and many members of Congress insist waterboarding is most definitely torture.

But whether it’s termed torture or an enhanced interrogation technique, as it is sometimes referred to by the CIA, the mechanics of waterboarding cause severe physical stress on the body and deep psychological wounds that can last a lifetime, according to healthcare experts interviewed by Nursing Spectrum and NurseWeek.

“That goes without saying,” says Michael Grodin, MD, codirector of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights in Boston. Grodin has treated Iraqi and Kurdish citizens who were subjected to waterboarding in the Middle East. The practice is an “enormously traumatic experience,” he says. “Everyone who knows anything about medicine would agree.”

Used as a torture technique for more than 900 years, waterboarding can take several forms, but in all cases victims feel as though they are drowning. The following description comes from waterboarding.org | "His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown." -Lt. Grover Flint, Philippine-American War and is consistent with descriptions of the technique from other sources:

“The interrogation subject is restrained on a board that is then inclined about 15 to 20 degrees so that the feet are above the head. An option is to place a damp cloth over the face to keep the water clinging to the face (Khmer Rouge technique) or put plastic wrap over the mouth but not the eyes or nose to prevent water from escaping the throat and sinuses (CIA technique).

“Pour water onto the inclined face so that the water runs into the upturned mouth and nose. The water stays in the head, filling the throat, mouth, and sinuses with water. The lungs don’t fill up with water so your prisoners don’t asphyxiate, but they do feel their entire upper respiratory system from sinuses to trachea filled with water, ‘simulating drowning.’ You’re drowning your subjects from the inside, filling their head and neck. The lungs stay out of the water, keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the glubbing.”

According to the recently published book Torture and Democracy, by Darius Rejali, an expert on modern torture and a professor of political science at Reed College in Oregon, “Even a small amount of water in the glottis causes violent coughing, initiating a fight-or-flight response, raising the heart rate and respiratory rate, and triggering desperate efforts to break free. The supply of oxygen available for basic metabolic functions is exhausted within seconds.”

Steven Miles, MD, a medical ethicist, says, “When you’re waterboarded, you don’t take the type of deep, relaxing breaths that you would for swimming. You’re burning off oxygen much faster, and so while you might be able to swim underwater for 45 seconds, when waterboarded, it only takes 20 seconds to run out of breath. Furthermore, controlling the experience is the hand of someone fundamentally not working in your interest, so you don’t know when you’re coming up and you don’t know what kind of clock you’re working on. They (the torturers) might be timing it with their own breath, which is totally different than the person holding his breath.”
Nurse.com - Waterboarding Takes Physical and Psychological Toll on Victims

 

[toomuchtime_]

Toomuchtime, you apparently do not know a thing about what you are talking about.


Most healthcare professionals will probably never come across a patient who has been subjected to waterboarding, the term used to describe a CIA interrogation technique heatedly debated in recent months by U.S. government officials. But victims who have been waterboarded in the past say the technique causes severe physical pain and often long-lasting psychological stress.

On Feb. 5, the CIA said three suspected al-Qaida terrorists were subjected to waterboarding to gain information about future acts of terrorism following 9/11, according to a story in the Feb. 6 Wall Street Journal. The controversy over waterboarding centers on whether the interrogation technique is a form of torture. Torture is illegal according to U.S. laws. The Bush administration claims waterboarding is not a form of torture because it leaves no physical marks. However, experts on torture, many ethicists, and many members of Congress insist waterboarding is most definitely torture.

But whether it’s termed torture or an enhanced interrogation technique, as it is sometimes referred to by the CIA, the mechanics of waterboarding cause severe physical stress on the body and deep psychological wounds that can last a lifetime, according to healthcare experts interviewed by Nursing Spectrum and NurseWeek.

“That goes without saying,” says Michael Grodin, MD, codirector of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights in Boston. Grodin has treated Iraqi and Kurdish citizens who were subjected to waterboarding in the Middle East. The practice is an “enormously traumatic experience,” he says. “Everyone who knows anything about medicine would agree.”

Used as a torture technique for more than 900 years, waterboarding can take several forms, but in all cases victims feel as though they are drowning. The following description comes from waterboarding.org | "His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown." -Lt. Grover Flint, Philippine-American War and is consistent with descriptions of the technique from other sources:

“The interrogation subject is restrained on a board that is then inclined about 15 to 20 degrees so that the feet are above the head. An option is to place a damp cloth over the face to keep the water clinging to the face (Khmer Rouge technique) or put plastic wrap over the mouth but not the eyes or nose to prevent water from escaping the throat and sinuses (CIA technique).

“Pour water onto the inclined face so that the water runs into the upturned mouth and nose. The water stays in the head, filling the throat, mouth, and sinuses with water. The lungs don’t fill up with water so your prisoners don’t asphyxiate, but they do feel their entire upper respiratory system from sinuses to trachea filled with water, ‘simulating drowning.’ You’re drowning your subjects from the inside, filling their head and neck. The lungs stay out of the water, keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the glubbing.”

According to the recently published book Torture and Democracy, by Darius Rejali, an expert on modern torture and a professor of political science at Reed College in Oregon, “Even a small amount of water in the glottis causes violent coughing, initiating a fight-or-flight response, raising the heart rate and respiratory rate, and triggering desperate efforts to break free. The supply of oxygen available for basic metabolic functions is exhausted within seconds.”

Steven Miles, MD, a medical ethicist, says, “When you’re waterboarded, you don’t take the type of deep, relaxing breaths that you would for swimming. You’re burning off oxygen much faster, and so while you might be able to swim underwater for 45 seconds, when waterboarded, it only takes 20 seconds to run out of breath. Furthermore, controlling the experience is the hand of someone fundamentally not working in your interest, so you don’t know when you’re coming up and you don’t know what kind of clock you’re working on. They (the torturers) might be timing it with their own breath, which is totally different than the person holding his breath.”
Nurse.com - Waterboarding Takes Physical and Psychological Toll on Victims

I understand that you have very strong feelings about water boarding, but the fact remains that, properly done, while it is a very stressful experience it causes no physical pain or damage. Some CIA agents who have undergone water boarding themselves as a part of their training report that even though they knew they would not be drowned, they were unable to control the fear they would be drowned. This is precisely why it is so effective.

So the question remains, what aspect of water boarding makes you think it is torture? Is it torture because it elicits such an intense anxiety response? Is it torture because it requires the prisoner be restrained? Clearly, it is qualitatively different from obvious forms of physical torture such as beatings or pulling out fingernails or attaching electrodes to the prisoner's genitals, so exactly what aspect of water boarding persuades you to classify it along with these other methods as torture?

 

[Truthmatters]

Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Classification as torture
Waterboarding is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts,[4][5][30] politicians, war veterans,[6][7] intelligence officials,[31] military judges,[9] and human rights organizations.[10][11] David Miliband, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary described it as torture on July 19, 2008, and stated "the UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture."[32] Arguments have been put forward that it might not be torture in all cases, or that they are uncertain.[33][34][35][36] The U.S. State Department has recognized that other techniques that involve submersion of the head of the subject during interrogation would qualify as torture.[37]

The United Nations' Report of the Committee Against Torture: Thirty-fifth Session of November 2006, stated that state parties should rescind any interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.[38]

 

[Truthmatters]

Forget Morality, Humanity or Legality: Torture DOESN’T WORK


Another point about torture is that experts say it does not work.



Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states “[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” (see also this)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work
A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists
The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work







Now ask yourself why would anyone use torture? To create the intell you want to create. You can justify anything when you force people to make the record you want to claim is supported by these means.

 

[toomuchtime_]

Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Classification as torture
Waterboarding is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts,[4][5][30] politicians, war veterans,[6][7] intelligence officials,[31] military judges,[9] and human rights organizations.[10][11] David Miliband, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary described it as torture on July 19, 2008, and stated "the UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture."[32] Arguments have been put forward that it might not be torture in all cases, or that they are uncertain.[33][34][35][36] The U.S. State Department has recognized that other techniques that involve submersion of the head of the subject during interrogation would qualify as torture.[37]

The United Nations' Report of the Committee Against Torture: Thirty-fifth Session of November 2006, stated that state parties should rescind any interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.[38]

I'm aware ot the fact that there is widespread disapproval of water boarding as an interrogation technique and I'm not addressing the question of whether it should be used or not. I'm just asking what aspect of water boarding persuades so many people that it should be classified along with extreme forms of physical torture such as beatings, pulling out fingernails or attaching electrodes to the genitals as torture. If you notice nearly all the people who call it torture give as their reason for doing so that some one else had previously called it torture.

 

[toomuchtime_]

Forget Morality, Humanity or Legality: Torture DOESN’T WORK


Another point about torture is that experts say it does not work.



Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states “[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” (see also this)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work
A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists
The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work







Now ask yourself why would anyone use torture? To create the intell you want to create. You can justify anything when you force people to make the record you want to claim is supported by these means.

Some "experts" say water boarding doesn't work and some say it does work, so it is a fair assumption that it works in some cases and not in others, just as other interogation techniques work better in some cases than in others. But why even bring this argument unless your point is that you would approve of water boarding if you believed it would work?

 

[WillowTree]

Why anybody would want to sit around and argue with a limp wristed pansy assed liberal who is prefectly willing to let their children get blown to smithereens rather than waterboard a terrorist is way beyond my compreshension.. I say we are in deep deep trouble now that their chosen idiot is in charge.

 

[toomuchtime_]

Why anybody would want to sit around and argue with a limp wristed pansy assed liberal who is prefectly willing to let their children get blown to smithereens rather than waterboard a terrorist is way beyond my compreshension.. I say we are in deep deep trouble now that their chosen idiot is in charge.

Well, keep in mind that only three people were water boarded at a time when the CIA thought we were still under an imminent threat of more attacks at home and then only after getting top level authorization from the administration, so if Obama announces that it is not US policy to use water boarding, it still leaves open the option of approving it by executive order under special conditions, just as it was during the Bush administration, without ever making a public announcement of it. Renditions for the purpose of using torture during interrogations was an accepted policy during the Clinton administration and Obama has lots of people around him who were either a part of that or have never spoken out against it, so it is likely that various techniques Obama will speak out against publicly will be available if his national security people think they need them.

 

[garyd]

I like how the automatic assumption is that we use the same techniques to waterboard perople now as the inquisition did five hundred years ago or the Japanese did during WWII.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Before someone starts saying if something is one thing or the other, it helps to know the definition first.......

tor⋅ture
   /ˈtɔrtʃər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [tawr-cher] Show IPA Pronunciation
noun, verb, -tured, -tur⋅ing.
–noun
1. the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2. a method of inflicting such pain.
3. Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.
4. extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.
5. a cause of severe pain or anguish.
–verb (used with object)
6. to subject to torture.
7. to afflict with severe pain of body or mind: My back is torturing me.
8. to force or extort by torture: We'll torture the truth from his lips!
9. to twist, force, or bring into some unnatural position or form: trees tortured by storms.
10. to distort or pervert (language, meaning, etc.).

torture definition | Dictionary.com

Basically, it's torture. It causes extreme anguish in the mind, as one of the results of it is that it places people in a mental state where they experience extreme terror by simulating drowning, which can (and usually does) result in PTSD.

What? Now are you going to tell me that those who came back from Iraq WITH NO PHYSICAL WOUNDS, who are suffering from PTSD aren't really hurt mentally?

Get a clue.

 

[garyd]

Frankly, biker in regards to terrorists who have chosen to blow up people and to prolong a war to the point where we simply, without ever having lost a battle get tired and go home I don't give a crap What dictionary.com says. The first step in reforming ass holes is to give them a reason to quit being assholes if that requires jacking up there heads bit or causing the poor darlings a bit of stress what sane person gives a damn?