You have it on authority that the water boarding our soldiers experience in training is the same as the water boarding that would be administered to them by the enemy if captured or, for that matter, the same as the water boarding we practice on "enemy combatants"?
What do you think water boarding is? Seriously - tell me what you think happens, step by step, in a water boarding session.
Yes, I'm sure its the same. Simulated drowning. Of course we don't do it with the ferocity that we would on our enemies but its still done on them yes. And I have watched videos of it.
What does "simulated drowning" mean? Be specific. How far do they take the victim - do you have ANY idea?
Geeze, Mr. Costanza, You're such a nice guy to think of waterboarding recipients as "victims." I know it seems to be the red-white-and-blue good guy American thing to think, and you seem to me to be all of those best-of-America personalities.
But can I point out a couple of things for you to think about sometime when you're not on the defense of a good debate? I know that may be asking the impossible, but I still think of you and others here who post their diverse perspectives as men and women of intelligence, imagination, and best of all, reason.
It is correct to say that getting waterboarded is probably not a very pleasant experience. In fact, it's so unpleasant, its "victim" often gives up information that prevents serious harm upon your fellow American citizens in less than 30 seconds of it.
Do you really, really think a mass serial murderer who has participated in killings of your fellow American citizens and their children can be justifiably called a "victim?"
Think about that. These terrorists are brainwashed individuals whose minds are literally poisoned by sociopathic liars who use religion as their language of persuasion, quite literally, in other words, misinterpreting mosque doctrine to have unchary pawns do dirty work they'd never consider doing under ordinary circumstances. Case in point, the lackluster playboy and multimillionaire Osama bin Laden, who used people in the world's poorest country who revered his money power, mainly, to execute people--and as many innocent people as possible--for whom he quite simply had no feelings.
Then-CIA director George Tenet, in his 2007 memoir, says that tough interrogation of al-Qaeda members — and documents found on them, he is careful to add — thwarted more than 20 plots "against U.S. infrastructure targets, including communications nodes, nuclear power plants, dams, bridges, and tunnels." A "future airborne attack on America's West Coast" was likely foiled only because the CIA didn't have "to treat KSM like a white collar criminal."
Time Magazine
Osama bin Laden, rich, spoiled, oversexed, and holier-than-thou nutcase, cast out of Saudia Arabia for subversion, came back with malice aforethought, and took over a dozen of its citizens as dupes for his petty and avaricious revenge against not only Saudia Arabia, but to pay back America for not kissing his kooky heiney when they helped him fight off Russia. That is hardly the portrait of a "victim." In fact, not only was OBL not a victim, he was the chief perpetrator, along with a seriously paranoid and craven horde of yes-men (who were the only type people OBL could stand, btw.) Victim, think about that word. The victims were the thousands of people who were trapped when Osama tapped his Saudi brainwashees to murder on 9/11/2001 in the New York World Trade Center.
Be careful when you use the case of victimhood on persons who undertook to satisfy and pander to Osama bin Laden, modern-day Midas, to kill our fellow Americans. These are your people, who laughed at your hilarious sketches and jokes on Seinfeld, shopped at discount houses to save pennies for a better future, and often voted for people you like as a charming liberal. Your "victims" are actually mercenaries who profit by pulling at other people's heartstrings and sympathetic natures to extract a scenario of murder against human beings as a whim of their disenchantment with a different culture--a culture they fear and can pander fears in others, particularly those who cannot understand our language and who are culturally naive enough to fool.
No waterboarding is not pleasant, but it is generally employed to get information, not to maim or to kill. And our people only used it on the worst offenders to find out where to stop terrorist acts, which is a very Constitutional requirement Americans demand of leadership.
And it is used only for national security from terrorists, and never as a common law enforcement procedure.
George Tenant had no axes to grind when he revealed, in his memoir of a few years back, which terrorist acts were directly thwarted through the use of waterboarding against only the worst mass serial perpetrators of murder against America's citizens and guests at the WTC.
Please trust that waterboarding does not scar or damage a person physically, but it gives the criminal terrorist an incentive to come clean to help those who watch over the American people an edge against our worst enemies.
Thanks for hearing me out, Mr. Costanza.