Torture v. Getting Shot in the Head

[Amazon 7]

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marine boot camp is a whole new level of "torture".

Yup and I was especially tortured since my drill instructors took a particular "liking" to me.

You get all the good dates.

[steve1 5]

I'm really not clear on what water-boarding is. I'd like to know.

I saw a torture technique, while training in the military. It scared the crap out of me. It involved smothering a person with a wet rag until they broke. I'm sure as hell glad it was never used on me.

Airforce pilots were being broken down as part of their escape and evasion training. They were held down, and a wet rag was placed over their mouth and nose. At the same time an asshole interrogator blew cigar smoke into their face. This was done over and over, until they broke. It didn't take long for these pilots to start talking about anything and everything. They felt a feeling of claustophobia and suffocation at the same time. One pilot was shown crying as he was forced to eat his own snot.

Many would start blabbing about anything to stop the torture. Could this be fatal? Hell yes it could. It would most likely cause trauma for you to deal with the rest of your life also.

If it has proven to be unreliable, why do it?

I read a story once of a soldier captured by the Germans. They would hold him under water until he passed out. He later started making up stuff to stop the torture. One time he tried to jump out of a window to kill himself. He was stopped, by his capters, and pulled back inside. As far as I know they never did get any useful info out of him.

This torture stuff may work great in the movies, but I wonder how well it works in real life....

[quade 4]

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I'm really not clear on what water-boarding is.

Now in easy to digest song form;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJSXbA9j0Js

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Butters 0]

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I'm really not clear on what water-boarding is.

It's a form of asphyxiation.

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[DanG 1]

Water-boarding is close to what you described, except that water is poured over the rag while it is over the subjects face. The effect is the same.

It is torture. It doesn't lead to good intel.

Period.

- Dan G

[rehmwa 2]

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I'm really not clear on what water-boarding is.

It's a form of asphyxiation.

admit it, you looked up the word to get the spelling right

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Shotgun 1]

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/

This is a documentary about what we did in Afghanistan, Iraq, & Gitmo, including interviews with the people involved.
It follows the orders up the chain of command.

FYI: For anyone who uses Netflix, it's available in the "watch instantly" stuff.

(I haven't actually watched it yet, but it's in my queue.)

[Butters 0]

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I'm really not clear on what water-boarding is.

It's a form of asphyxiation.

admit it, you looked up the word to get the spelling right

I admit it. Spelling and grammar are not my strong points ...

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[TrophyHusband 0]

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Anyone with half a brain can tell the difference between holding prisoners, torturing them, and boot camp.

obviously there is a huge difference in what people consider torture. while i can certainly see where people would find waterboarding torture, stress positions are definately not torture. what i really wish we knew for sure is what exactly is effective. there seems to be a plethora of people on both sides of this claiming its effectiveness/non effectiveness.

"Your scrotum is quite nice" - Skymama
www.kjandmegan.com

[jcd11235 0]

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there seems to be a plethora of people on both sides of this claiming its effectiveness/non effectiveness.

That doesn't really seem to be the case. The operatives seem to generally be on the non-effective side of the argument, as has been demonstrated in numerous other threads on the topic. Here is a good thread to read for more in depth info. Be sure to follow the links contained within.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[rushmc 23]

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Amnesty International’s.....

NOW HERE is a none political opinion that should be regarded as gospel




By the way, what I quote and pasted was as far as anybody should go

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 3,009]

> there seems to be a plethora of people on both sides of this claiming
> its effectiveness/non effectiveness.

Indeed. It's easy to tell them apart, though - anyone with any experience in interrogation is claiming it doesn't work. People who have watched "24" seems to think it does.

[nerdgirl 0]

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My question is this: Why is the anti-enhanced interrogation technique crowd not up in arms over the shooting over the three Somaili pirates. Three men were killed to save the life of one men! What about their rights?

I’m going to respond seriously as if you are asking a genuine question, which isn't to imply that it isn't ... but I'm tired & may not be as diplomatic as usual. My apologies,

Rule of law.

At the core, that’s the answer to your question.

We are a nation of laws.
We are not anarchy.
We are not a despotic dictatorship or regime.
We are not the Taliban or al Qa’eda.

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So what is wrong with waterbarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or other terrorists if it saves lives?

All the evidence suggests it doesn’t save lives.
The evidence suggests that it wastes time, produces bad information (that has to be investigated thereby wasting more time, money, and potentially putting lives at risk).
The evidence suggests that there are more effective means that produce good intelligence and that have worked in real-world “ticking time bomb” scenarios to save lives.
The evidence suggests that it puts US and allied soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and deployed civilians at greater risk (than they already are).

If waterboarding saved lives, whether it is wrong or not would be a different question.

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You can't possibly believe that no good information was obtained from these interrogations that prevented attacks and saved lives.

I believe that. The facts and the evidence support that.

I don’t have to invoke an ethical argument – just looking the facts.

The evidence – both inductive and deductive from the particular of KSM and the general of 60+ years of torture being ineffective – supports that.

Considering all the evidence that has been presented, I ask (more rhetorically) how one can possibly believe that “any good information was obtained from these interrogations that prevented attacks and saved lives”? Not of you [AWL71]. But notionally of the John Yoo’s and Michael Hayden’s of the world. As I’ve stated before I don’t think they’re “idiots” or any other pejorative name one could use. I also see nothing to suggest that that they were acting intentionally maliciously or malevolently. I’m confident that they genuinely believed that *at the time* that they were doing right and acting in the US national interest. I am also quite confident in stating they were wrong. Very wrong.

What is the cognitive process that one goes through? How does one justify the situational ethics of *justifiably* decrying torture by terrorists and justifying to one’s own use of torture? It’s *not* like rationalizing cheating on your spouse in which one comes with all sorts of justifications for why “it’s okay, this time … the wife’s a bitch, he’s rich & powerful, she’s a supermodel, he makes me feel ‘loved’ …” By what cognitive process does one push aside all the available historical, legal, strategic, technical, and operational information in favor of an operational tactic? I don't get it.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[nerdgirl 0]

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there seems to be a plethora of people on both sides of this claiming its effectiveness/non effectiveness.

That doesn't really seem to be the case. The operatives seem to generally be on the non-effective side of the argument, as has been demonstrated in numerous other threads on the topic. Here is a good thread to read for more in depth info. Be sure to follow the links contained within.

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Amnesty International’s.....

NOW HERE is a none political opinion that should be regarded as gospel




By the way, what I quote and pasted was as far as anybody should go

Really Marc. Really?

Did you look through the thread as [jcd11235] suggested?

Here's a list of some of the folks and organizations cited in that thread who have asserted the ineffectiveness of torture:

The US Army Human Intelligence Collector Operators and US Army Interrogators

The active duty and retired Marines who are members of the United States Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association

LTG Harry E. Soyster, USA (ret) and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), i.e., the Defense Department's lead intelligece agency, & Commanding General of Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM): “If they think these methods ["enhanced interrogation," i.e., torture] work, they're woefully misinformed. Torture is counterproductive on all fronts. It produces bad intelligence. It ruins the subject, makes them useless for further interrogation. And it damages our credibility around the world.”

LTC James Corum, USA (ret), who stated “The torture of suspects [at Abu Ghraib] did not lead to any useful intelligence information being extracted."

Former CIA Directorate of Operations (DO), not the analysis side, officer Robert Baer: torture is “bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture’s bad enough.”

Larry Johnson, another former CIA officer – operations not analyst – and former deputy director of counterterrorism at the Department of State

“[Jack] Cloonan [32-year FBI veteran, whose experience included counterintelligence, counterterrorism, the Joint Terrorism Task Force] and a New York Police Department detective secured actionable intelligence from a suspect in the foiled millennium-bombing plot in just six hours on December 30, 1999 -- by following FBI procedure, and by encouraging a suspect to pray during his Ramadan fast. The suspect even agreed to place calls to his confederates, which led to their speedy arrests.”

Ray McGovern 27-year veteran of the CIA and was responsible for preparing & delivering PDB’s to President Reagan and President HW Bush.

David Becker, DIA

John Berglund, DHS

Brian Boetig, FBI

Michael Gelles, NCIS

Michael Kremlacek U.S. Army Intelligence

Robert McFadden, CIFA (it was DoD agency)

C.A. Morgan III, Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (aka ITIC, part of CIA, unless they’re ‘officially’ ODNI now)

Kenneth Rollins, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (another DoD agency)

Scott Shumate, CIFA

Andre Simons, FBI

John Wahlquist, National Defense Intelligence College (part of DIA)

There is no comparable list of operators and interrogators supporting use of waterboarding, "enhanced interrogation methods," or other eumphemisms for torture.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[nerdgirl 0]

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It all depends upon who is president, as to whether these techniques are justifiable or not.

The techniques of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" methods were found to be ineffective during President Eisenhower’s (Republican from Texas, as you likely know) term.

I.e., For those who are looking for a correlation between political party or State of birth and USG torture policies, they don’t correlate.

Waterboarding was considered torture and shown to be ineffective under President Eisenhower's adminstration.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[quade 4]

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The techniques of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" methods were found to be ineffective during President Eisenhower’s (Republican from Texas, as you likely know) term.

Hate to break this to you but a metric shit ton of attitudes in Texas have changed since the Eisenhower days.

For instance, did you know that at one point Texas was the state where you'd most likely NOT get a death sentence for murder even though Houston was the murder capital of the world?

True story!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,865729,00.html

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[jerryzflies 0]

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Anyone with half a brain can tell the difference between holding prisoners, torturing them, and boot camp.

obviously there is a huge difference in what people consider torture. while i can certainly see where people would find waterboarding torture, stress positions are definately not torture. what i really wish we knew for sure is what exactly is effective. there seems to be a plethora of people on both sides of this claiming its effectiveness/non effectiveness.

We imprisoned Jap soldiers after WWII for doing it to US prisoners. Please explain how is it not hypocrisy to claim that it's OK and legal when we do it.

If you can't fix it with a hammer, the problem's electrical.

[nerdgirl 0]

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if that's the case, then i have been tortured by my government along with every other person who has enlisted in the military. our special forces really get tortured too.



... most of the things on that list are things our own soldiers are put through in the course of training. some of the things on the list are laughable, such as stress positions. i spent plenty of time in stress positions in boot camp. it sucked, but even when being put through it, i didn't feel i was being tortured.

Let me try an illustrative analogy ...

Many members of the military (& a few 'special' civilians) have been trained in live chemical and biological warfare agent environments, does that mean they were victims of chemical weapons?

The US military also does live chemical warfare agent training at Ft Leonard Wood; does that mean that we should use chemical warfare agents (nerve agents, blister agents) offensively? (That question may deserve its own thread.)

Soldiers, sailors, airman, and Marines are trained in live agent environments to execute defensive countermeasures and to operate in a contaminated environment. It's not training to use CW or BW. I don't feel like I can compare myself to victims of Halabja either.


The use of waterboarding in SERE training was based on torture methods used by the Soviets and North Koreans against US service members. The US military uses waterboarding as part of SERE training to resist torture, i.e., tacitly acknowledging it is *torture.* It's training to resist torture. It was not intended as an instructional manual for interrogation.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[nerdgirl 0]

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For instance, did you know that at one point Texas was the state where you'd most likely NOT get a death sentence for murder even though Houston was the murder capital of the world?

True story!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,865729,00.html

I didn't know that. Thanks for the link.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[idrankwhat 0]

To compliment Marg's detailed posts on the subject:



Torture’s Rendition
by Matthew Alexander

04.23.2009


As a former senior military interrogator, it’s deeply troubling to me after reading the recently released torture memos that we doubted our ability to win the battle of wits in the interrogation booth and resorted to torturing and abusing prisoners. There is no profession that is successful 100 percent of the time. Doctors can’t cure all patients.

When I was in Iraq leading an interrogation team hunting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda, we experienced failures. The highly skilled soldiers that my task force sent out to capture and kill terrorists based on my team’s information sometimes failed. And, occasionally, pilots missed their targets. We must accept that we can lose battles and still win the war.

On the path to Zarqawi, my interrogations team encountered al-Qaeda leaders who never cooperated. Those sessions were opportunities to refine our skills. It made us better interrogators and we later used those refined skills to string together a series of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Those who tout the successes of waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah are omitting at least one important fact. Neither man gave up Osama bin Laden. Every good interrogator knows that a detainee can give up information that sells out the men and operations below him. They need only protect their leader for the organization to survive. The fact that Osama bin Laden is still alive is proof that waterboarding does not work. The more important fact, however, is that our policy of torture and abuse has cost us American lives.

As a senior interrogator in Iraq, I conducted more than three hundred interrogations and monitored more than one thousand. I heard numerous foreign fighters state that the reason they came to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our policy of torture and abuse is Al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. These same insurgents have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of our troops in Iraq, not to mention Iraqi civilians. Torture and abuse are counterproductive in the long term and, ultimately, cost us more lives than they save.

The more important argument, however, is the moral one. One of al-Qaeda’s goals is to prove that America does not live up to its principles. They assert that we are a nation of hypocrites. By engaging in torture and abuse, we are playing into their hands. This war has two fronts—protecting our security by thwarting terrorist attacks and preserving American principles. We cannot become our enemy in seeking to defeat him.

Americans are plenty smart enough to convince al-Qaeda members to cooperate. My interrogation team did it time and time again with the most hardened al-Qaeda terrorists, even when they were familiar with our methods. Criminal investigators face the same challenge every day in America with suspects who watch Law & Order or NYPD Blue and learn interrogation techniques. Yet, every day detectives elicit confessions, just as I did when I was working as a federal agent.

I told my interrogators in Iraq, “The things that make you a great American are the same things that will make you a great interrogator. Leverage your culture—tolerance, cultural understanding, compassion, intellect and ingenuity.” Those are things that win wars.



Matthew Alexander spent fourteen years in the U.S. Air Force. An “investigator turned interrogator,” he deployed to Iraq in 2006, where he led the interrogations team that located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by coalition forces. Alexander was awarded the Bronze Star for his achievements. He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (Free Press, 2008).
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21354

[Remster 30]

Marg FTW!

Now, people will keep on saying "but if it has a possibility of working, lets do it!", and ignore all the data you presented. Again.

Remster

[Amazon 7]

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Marg FTW!

Now, people will keep on saying "but if it has a possibility of working, lets do it!", and ignore all the data you presented. Again.

Sometimes I think that argueing with a box of rocks would produce better results of understanding than trying to get some of the right wing to admit they are wrong about anything they "believe".

[jcd11235 0]

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Amnesty International’s.....

NOW HERE is a none political opinion that should be regarded as gospel




By the way, what I quote and pasted was as far as anybody should go

And if that is as far as anyone reads, they will remain ignorant of the facts of the matter.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[downwardspiral 0]

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Many members of the military (& a few 'special' civilians) have been trained in live chemical and biological warfare agent environments, does that mean they were victims of chemical weapons?

Wow...live nerve agent training? That's a scary and yet exhilirating thought. Have you ever had the pleasure of attending NBC training or more specifically, the CS chamber? Strangely, it's one of the things I miss most about my time in service. Although the gassing we received at bootcamp was rather torturous... the gas was so thick we couldn't see to the other side of the room.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[steve1 5]

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[ Have you ever had the pleasure of attending NBC training or more specifically, the CS chamber? Strangely, it's one of the things I miss most about my time in service. Although the gassing we received at bootcamp was rather torturous... the gas was so thick we couldn't see to the other side of the room.

Awe Yes, the ole CS chamber. I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Rewind about 40 years..... Ft. Polk, La., 1969.....Just for effect our Drill Sargents ran a couple of trainees through the chamber, and then brought them back to display in front of our company. Tears and snot were streaming down their pained faces. They gasped for breath, spitting and puking at the same time.

"Now it was your turn, boys!" a grinning D.I. yammered with a loud southern drawl.

So, in we went with our gas masks on. I thought it was kind of cool until we had to take them off. One or two breaths later a wave a nausea hits you, and you start coughing your guts out. Tears start pouring out of your eyes like crazy. Finally it's time to go and everyone runs out the door to spit and puke. I sure don't want to do that again....