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.
I grow infinitely tired of the torture crap argument that is brought up again and again. We are both against water boarding but for completely different reasons. It seems that you are forgetting what this is and what we are dealing with. Framing this in a context of the horrible things that we are doing to the terrorists or how altruistic we should be to not condone those actions is utter nonsense. Get this through your head: war is hell. Water boarding is the ABSOLUTE LEAST of the crimes against humanity that occurs during wartime. You focus the entire debate on THREE worthless individuals that rival Hitler in the evil that spews from their efforts getting water boarded when there are FAR worse things occurring every moment of every war. You think that water boarding is worse than having ball bearings shot through your body until you bleed to death in the cab of a Humvee? How about burning to death? Maybe bleeding out after one of our .50 cal rounds passes NEAR your leg and abruptly removes it? Those are all kosher and ‘right’ because they follow some sort of gentleman’s rules in war while water boarding is the ultimate evil. That must be stopped but blowing off limbs, bombing people and 250mm rounds from the AC-130 are all perfectly OK.
War is ugly, PERIOD. There are terrible things that happen in war and hiding behind the supposed horror of water boarding is asinine. There is nothing terrible about that compared to the horrors that occur on a constant basis day in and day out in war. My only wish is that the American people actually see and understand the TRUE horrors that occur before pushing their blind support behind such heinous acts. War is a necessity that should only be called upon in the MOST DIRE of circumstances. The people use it as a righteous club and hide from the reality by acting aghast at something like water boarding when there is so much more and so much worse going on that they refuse to see. YOU are doing that exact same exercise. You are doing the true horrors a disservice when we argue about the idiotic use of water boarding.
DonÂ’t even get started about war crime trials either. Those are a farce and pointless retribution for the victors. Were that not the case and war crimes were a reality then there would be hell to pay for what we did during the Vietnam War. We did things in that conflict that make all the acts of this war look like childÂ’s play.
I disagree with water boarding for another reason altogether. It is ineffective. Period. That is where the debate should begin and that is where it should end. The one thing that we did learn from BushÂ’s idiotic policy toward the prisoners is that water boarding is useless in gathering accurate data. Had it been useful then there would be ample evidence provided by that administration to vindicate themselves.