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Originally Posted by JayJamJah
It's a matter of does the ends justify the means. I personally have no problem with anything that does not have any permanent effects and if the information gathered because of it saves one life.
It's not as if it's done to innocent people, it's a technique used get information from suspected terrorists primarily. There are mixed reports that suggest it works and that it does not. I know having experienced it, I'd find it difficult to believe I was not going to die the next time they did it and would be very likely to give up any information I had to make it stop.
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So when the Japanese waterboarded United States soldiers it was acceptable? Abu Zubaydah had given up all the information he had before he was even waterboarded. I don't understand how the United States can claim any sort of moral high ground when it treats its prisoners no differently then their enemies, who are supposedly "evil" and the wrong side, would treat theirs.
To go back to Zubaydah; torture doesn't work.
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It was the FBI's rapport-building techniques that got the information we needed. It wasn't the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" which did it. Torture is ineffective and this has been shown over and over again. It's degrading to everyone who accepts it. It does nothing but rot the moral foundation and security of society.
And waterboarding is torture. I don't understand how you can even debate that. Jesse Ventura, Christopher Hitchens and many others who voluntarily underwent it have said that it is torture and they were perfectly aware they could get out of it at anytime and they were going to go home to their families after it was all done and have a nice dinner. The same can't be said for the United States own soldiers who were waterboarded. They didn't know what was going to happen to them but they did after it was all over say the process was torture and at the times the United States did believed it was too. I guess that changes when you become the torturers though.
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Originally Posted by UNCAT
For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
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The United States signed that but it's nice to know they have a complete disregard/disrespect for international agreements. Near-drowning someone to obtain information - and it's a big IF on whether or not it's actually obtained - falls right into the definition of torture. The way the United States conducts itself is the definition of arrogance and hypocrisy.
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