j p o wrote:
big kahuna wrote:
M~ wrote:
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone in this day and age thinks torture is effective for anything other than inflicting emotional and physical pain on a subject.
Torture is taking a US military TA-312 phone and running the bare-wire ends from it to a captured enemy's testicles and then cranking the phone, sending an electrical charge down the wires, in order to get him to talk.
The Pakistanis torture men and women by lowering them down onto a rounded-end steel rod so that the rod slides into the rectum, and then very slowly lowering them further still, all the while telling them it's in their best interests to talk. The world is full of torture techniques employed by governments and militias and the like. Not sure that waterboarding actually constitutes "torture" in the real sense, though I agree on it being classified as "enhanced interrogation."
Whether waterboarding actually works or not is also up for debate. Some say it does and others maintain it doesn't. From what I understand, interrogators had to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational planner behind the 9/11 attacks, something like 186 (or 156, I forget which) times
before he finally spilled his secrets. Other detainees proven to have participated in the 9/11 planning and attack or support phases cracked after only a single session or 2 or 3 of them.
US military personnel being trained in survival, evasion, resistance and escape (SERE) are also subjected to a technique that's similar to waterboarding, by the way.
Whether waterboarding is actual torture or not appears to be a matter of one's ideology, it seems to me.
About that,
https://www.newyorker.com/...-sheikh-mohammed-cia Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation: “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote. “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.” “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.” An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.KSM may not have had 183 waterboarding sessions as it turns out. Only one of the three Gitmo detainees (KSM, Abu Zubaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri) to have been waterboarded actually gave in after a few waterboarding events (al-Nashiri, at 3 times). The story of the waterboarding of these Gitmo detainees is a bit more complicated than it seems. Also,
WaPo says there are credible accounts of others who may have been waterboarded. As to efficacy, the technique (or torture session, for those on this thread having the vapors over these gentlemen being waterboarded) may or may not be effective, depending on the person and on the training in resisting interrogation the person may have received. But that was why it was only one of numerous interrogation techniques (torture techniques) available to interrogators at the time. Think of these techniques as almost being a salad bar, with interrogators picking and choosing until they found just the right combination of ingredients to make the perfect salad. (Is this a harsh analogy? No doubt, and I freely admit that.)
We also know John McCain thinks waterboarding is torture, so there's that. On the other hand, Medal of Honor recipients, the late (Air Force colonel, retired) Leo Thorsness and the late (Air Force colonel, retired) Bud Day, awarded their Medals of Honor for service in Vietnam, didn't believe it was torture. They both spent nearly 6 years as prisoners of war in various camps in and around the Hanoi, North Vietnam area and Day once shared a cell with McCain. Along with McCain, both experienced severe and prolonged torture at the hands of their captors, giving them a perspective on it that none of us, thankfully, have ever been forced to gain.
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."