water boarding
Fox News’ Steve Harrigan subjected himself to “water boarding” performed by some retired military guys, and submitted in seconds to the “torture.” Below is a video of the report and segments of the technique being performed. Essentially they cover your face and breathing hole (nostrils, mouth) in increasing intensity, and pour water into the open holes making the subject feel as if he’s going to drown. I am confident this is not pleasant, and when performed by an enemy I can only imagine how effective it is at making guys talk.
But is it really torture? Is it really that bad? Am I the only who isn’t appalled by this? I frankly don’t care, and support the use of the tactic. It looks rather effective, and nobody seems worse for wear. Nobody is permanently injured, maimed, scarred, or killed. Crossing the line into any of those areas where permanent damage, wounds, or death occurs is most certainly torture and of course should not be allowed. But causing mental distress MUST be part of the interrogator repertoire. One might argue that intelligence gathered under such duress is much less reliable than volunteered information, and I agree completely, but still know that interrogations under intimidation is always going to remain a useful source of information.
This post is not an attempt to argue that lines haven’t been crossed. I am sure they were crossed in Abu Grab and I am sure they are regularly crossed elsewhere in Iraq. I do not support torture. But I do support distressful interrogation, water boarding included, at least as it is described in this segment.
Am I an evil person? I don’t think so. I just think we have to be careful where we direct our outrage or our outrage becomes meaningless.
2 seconds. what a goof. good thing he doesn’t know any state secrets
The more I read about your individual thoughts, Chris, the more I think you are a fucked individual
You can’t torture. Period. Water boarding, chinese water torture, car battery to the nuts - no, none of the above - you can’t torture.
Thats the only thing I can hang my hat on every day as an american, is that I love my country because we are not animals. We should always be taking the moral high ground. That doesn’t include torture. Am I being naive? Probably. Whats next? Scrapping our Air Force drones and sending in some 16 year olds with TNT under their trench coat like Rerun at a Doobie Brother’s concert?
Tie me up, don’t feed me for a few days and hang a good ol fashion Astoria meat stick 6 inches from my mouth. Thats about as far as I’ll go for acceptable interrogation techniques.
Diclerico - I don’t even know if you believe your own post, sounds like you are just drumming up controversy.
You bearded pussy fuck. Of course I believe my own post.
I guess my point is that we all have a line of where interrogation ends and torture begins. Your line is at food/starvation (of course) and somebody else would call that torture. What I am saying is that fear and intimidation is still within my line. I am trying to draw a line at actual physical abuse meaning physical damage is induced in some way: thumb screws, electrocution of the nuts, beatings, anal raping, punching, etc. PHYSICAL damage. Water boarding seems like good old fashioned fraternity hazing to me.
That’s actually an interesting concept. Anything that goes beyond frat hazing is torture. (I know for a fact that you stuck your thumb in some dude’s ass during the elephant walk in college, and I was never in a fraternity.) How’s that you Taliban-bearded prick?
MAN Diclerico! You suck your father off with that mouth?
Long story short - I don’t want my government doing anything to a “terrorist” that I don’t want someone doing to a 19 year old PFC from Nebraska. Thats my rule of thumb.
Speaking of thumbs, I never was in a fraternity, never elephant walked - oddly the gayest thing I’ve ever done is catch about 200 views of your balls in the 9 years I’ve known you
This is why I hate politics and goverment afairs.
It brings out the ’stupid’ in people.
‘Terrorists? Kill those fuckers!! Kill them all!!
Wait. You’re gonna torture them? Oh no. Don’t do that. That’s…mean.’
Rossi,
Your precious Americans are not moral, are not just, and are definitely not about the ‘high ground’. Please unbury your head from sand or ass.
I don’t give two shits about government afairs, but for everytime I hear ‘America is the greatest country in the world’, I would like some fucking proof.
Mmmm…. Astoria meat stick…. drool…
Jason,
Not sure what your point is. I don’t know too many people that are as trigger happy as you say to kill terrorists, then fight against torture. In fact the only thing that I think is “stupid” is take something that people are this passionate about and boil it down to generalities. You paint a picture of hypocritical liberals who fight against the terrorists they object to torture, or these jingoistic Bushies who think the world ends at the US boarders. I wish it was that simple, but I’ve rarely seen that.
All I can do is speak for myself. I unapologetically love America. During its history it really has been greatest country yet we are veering away from it by actions like this war, and in this case torture (in my opinion). The Valerie Plame case and Scooter Libby’s coming pardon, Hailiburton contracts, the Carslye Group - it all makes me sick, but mostly because its not in our country’s DNA. We are better than that. So if you are comparing 2007 USA to the world, sure we are not really looking our best. But 1776-2007 put what we’ve contributed to the world toe to toe with any other country and you can’t deny we’ve changed the world for the better
Will Rogers had a quote (that I don’t remember exactly) that says you can’t trust a man who doesn’t love where he lives. You have every right to disagree and tell me my heads up my ass - but again that goes back to that whole ‘free speech’ thing that kinda makes us totally sweet.
Man… I hate it when I’m not smart enough to debate stuff.
I’mma go hit the pipe.
yes.
go hit that pipe since you got owned
Rossi,
Why exactly do you consider the United States so great? It consistently ranks way down the list when compared to other countries in terms of education, technology, employment, etc.
The UN rank the United States 18th out of the 24 richest countries for effective education. The US ranked 28th on environmental performance.
Perhaps you like the fact that the United States ranks #1 with regard to the percentage of the population which beleives God wrote the Bible and Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years. We’re probably #1 in terms of national obesity too.
Yay, U-S-A, U-S-A…
You might also want to date your “America is great” period from 1776-2000. That way you avoid Katrina. Of course, you’re on your own when it comes to justifying Vietnam, ignoring Rawanda, and why it took you 2 years to get into WWII.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love America. But you can’t keep your head up your ass and pretend it’s #1 when it clearly isn’t. And McDonald’s hardly made the world a better place.
(BTW, I’m English.)
Paul,
You remind me of the guy in Jr High school who stands behind all the other bigger kids and yells ‘Yeah! What he said!’ after every vocal rant.
And by the way…’owned’? What’r you, twelve?
When they torture you this way you think that you are literally drowning. Yes the USA uses this way of torture as it is very common, but only to those in guantanimo bay. And this method CAN kill you, thats why they had a medic on site.
Chris,
I’ve read you for quite a while, and normally I find myself nodding enthusiastically… i can relate to a lot of what you discuss. I’m a servicemember who has attended a form of training that simulates a POW experience to help teach successful resistance skills to personnel who are designted “high risk of capture.” At this training, I was waterboarded. I have to admit I haven’t read ALL the comments here, and I’m not an expert, but speaking as someone who’s been through it… I consider it’s systematic application to ellicit a respons to be torture. Everyone else I was trained with agreed. My two bits. –anon
[…] I am appalled, angry, sad, and sick to my stomach over the US system(s) of everything. Politics, healthcare, education, it’s all completely screwed up. Normally I am embarrassed over how the world feels about us, about our war on terror, about our bumbling president, about our 15% passport penetration, and our waterboarding technique (not really torture). But tonight, I am embarrassed at myself. We should look around and be saddened by the brainwashed ass-fucking we’ve been taking for so long. It is all so stunningly like religion that I don’t know what to hate more. […]