Is waterboarding torture?

[f0rTyLeGz]

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A conservative radio talk show host undergoes waterboarding thinking it will be a lark. He lasts six seconds.

I'm wondering if the U.S. government believes that waterboarding isnt torture, then why doesn't our local police use the &quot;technique&quot; for solving crimes?

[evanovitch]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

a man offah Bush an Cheney $100 fi every minit dem can withstand it...so far, no ansa from dem...but Cheney a beat up him gum bout him neva know seh Colin Powell was still a Republican....wich remind mi seh mi neva ketch Colin ansa lass Sunday pon CBS mawning show....

[neutral]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

I dont suppose the US government would ever use waterboarding in the US,they know it is a nasty horrible thing to do,that is why they sanctioned it outside the US,...just like a lot of other nasty horrible things they do while trying to look and sound like they`ve taken the moral high ground.

[Phatty]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

My Goodness

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">a man offah Bush an Cheney $100 fi every minit dem can withstand it...so far, no ansa from dem...but Cheney a beat up him gum bout him neva know seh Colin Powell was still a Republican....wich remind mi seh mi neva ketch Colin ansa lass Sunday pon CBS mawning show.... </div></div> I don't know about Bush, but for Chaney it would be certain death,since he has a pacemaker,and his heart would not survive the even a breif period of oxygen depletion.

[jah_yout]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

can someone just put a straight-jacket on this cheney guy

[f0rTyLeGz]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Phatty</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> My Goodness </div></div>
Oh man! That's intense!

[Phatty]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

That gave me chills

[bigbooie]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

I&quot;m telling you its a sensation like no other. Your brain seems to don't know what to to with the message. Trying to do that trash for 20 minutes if you can last that long. Your lucky if you can last 3 seconds.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: f0rTyLeGz</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">A conservative radio talk show host undergoes waterboarding thinking it will be a lark. He lasts six seconds.</span> </div></div>
The wretch had to admit that waterboarding is horrific and that it is torture.

[RichD]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

here is a link to Christopher Hitchens undergoing it

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/video/2008/hitchens_video200808

[Suesumba]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

now i know what it was. scary

[Blackstar*]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

At least Mancow and Hitchens were man enough to try the experience.


<span style="font-size: 8pt">The author catches his breath after undergoing his first waterboarding session. </span>

[RichD]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

the supporters make it sound like its just throwing a little water over the face

[Blackstar*]

Re: Is waterboarding torture?

Here are some excerpts from the piece Hitchens wrote about the experience:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it &quot;simulates&quot; the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The &quot;board&quot; is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face.</span></div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">then I said, with slightly more bravado than was justified, that I’d like to try it one more time. There was a paramedic present who checked my racing pulse and warned me about adrenaline rush. An interval was ordered, and then I felt the mask come down again. Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass. As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.</span></div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><span style="font-style: italic">It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” </span></div></div>