What is waterboarding?

by **StrykerFSU** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:58 am

I know the torture debate is for all intents and purposes over but I think it's important to know what they were talking about. This video shows a Fox News correspondent being waterboarded. Also keep in mind that thousands of our soldiers are waterboarded each year as part of their training...and we can't do it to suspected terrorists.

http://journals.aol.com/thefeedblog/AOLNewsTheFeed/#Entry2420

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by **Rob Graff** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:11 am

Cliff:

Isn't the difference that the correspondant and those who undergo this treatment as "training" know that in reality, they will not be drowned?

Rob

by **FLAK** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:50 am

Rob Graff wrote:Cliff:

Isn't the difference that the correspondant and those who undergo this treatment as "training" know that in reality, they will not be drowned?

Rob

Isn't the whole point of using this as a torture method is that they don't know that they will not be drowned? They bring them to the brink psychologically, get the information they want, and the guy they were interrogating walks away with a free bath. It's win win for everyone especially those that have to deal with terrorist B.O. :wink:

by **StrykerFSU** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:01 am

That is definately a valid point, Rob. I'm not advocating waterboarding or any form of torture by posting this link. I had read descriptions of the technique but had never seen it performed and thought that everyone could learn something by seeing it. It seems to me that waterboarding is definately more mental discomfort than physical in the sense that you think you are drowning but are in fact perfectly safe. Now whether one thinks that still counts as torture is up to the individual.

by **laxfan25** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:13 am

As many of the people involved with interrogations have stated though - how valid is the information that someone would give up under such conditions? I think the tendency would be to tell them anything to get them to stop.
I would bet it we were to strap GWB and Cheney to a waterboard we could get them to admit that they went into Iraq under false pretenses.
Truth or not?

by **yourmom** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:14 am

It gets a thumbs up from me. He even says that a short time later he was standing next to the pool feeling fine. Just scare tactics that seem more humane to me.

by **StrykerFSU** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:16 am

I would bet it we were to strap GWB and Cheney to a waterboard we could get them to admit that they went into Iraq under false pretenses.

And we could get Clinton to admit he's got a thing for big girls. I kid, I kid.

by **laxfan25** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:36 am

StrykerFSU wrote:
I would bet it we were to strap GWB and Cheney to a waterboard we could get them to admit that they went into Iraq under false pretenses.

And we could get Clinton to admit he's got a thing for big girls. I kid, I kid.

Hey, you don't have to strap him to the board to get that!
I would also think that actual recipients of this practice are not quite as coddled as the Fox reporter. Instead of explaining what they are going to do, I think they might be yelling a few other things!
This discussion of the effectiveness of torture is not between terrorist-loving Democrats and Republicans that are protecting our country (including those wimps on the left) from the bad guys. There are many experts in interrogation who will tell you that the torture is NOT a reliable method of extracting worthwhile information.

by **SLUDoubleDeuce** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 12:16 pm

laxfan25 wrote:
StrykerFSU wrote:
I would bet it we were to strap GWB and Cheney to a waterboard we could get them to admit that they went into Iraq under false pretenses.

And we could get Clinton to admit he's got a thing for big girls. I kid, I kid.

Hey, you don't have to strap him to the board to get that!
I would also think that actual recipients of this practice are not quite as coddled as the Fox reporter. Instead of explaining what they are going to do, I think they might be yelling a few other things!
This discussion of the effectiveness of torture is not between terrorist-loving Democrats and Republicans that are protecting our country (including those wimps on the left) from the bad guys. There are many experts in interrogation who will tell you that the torture is NOT a reliable method of extracting worthwhile information.

Works for Jack Bauer...

by **UofMLaxGoalie11** on Wed Nov 08, 2006 2:32 pm

laxfan25 wrote:
StrykerFSU wrote:
I would bet it we were to strap GWB and Cheney to a waterboard we could get them to admit that they went into Iraq under false pretenses.

And we could get Clinton to admit he's got a thing for big girls. I kid, I kid.

Hey, you don't have to strap him to the board to get that!

No, we just had to impeach him.

by **StrykerFSU** on Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:57 am

Interesting suff in today's Washington Post concerning who knew about waterboarding and when they knew it. Names in the know as far back as 2002 include Nancy Pelosi among other leading Democrats. Strangely, they raised no objections to the practice at the time. It was not until the practice met public scrutiny that they condemned it and the Bush Administration for employing the tactic.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html?hpid=topnews
There is plenty of handwringing at the end of the piece with a lot of "I don't recall that specifically" and other such nonsense. My point in posting this is not to rehash the torture debate but to illustrate just how much political grandstanding is going on in matters concerning national security.

by **Dan Wishengrad** on Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:02 pm

Keith Olbermann said it best:

"Study after study for generation after generation has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth."

Ask John McCain how much he revealed in the North Vietnamese prison cell when his captors used far worse methods than waterboarding. Listen to Senator McCain's unecquivocal denial of torture as an effective method of extracting useful information from a captive. And, please, remember that when we Americans torture our prisoners and the President lies and says we do not, that we no longer have any moral ground to expect or demand that our own POWs be treated humanely and according to the Geneva Convention by any other captors. Waterboarding IS torture, no matter how you "spin it".

Once you go down this slippery slope there is no turning back, and we Americans are supposed to be better than this. This is not a Democratic vs Republican debate at all. We do not or should not torture, and we should not destroy evidence of our torturing to cover up our own sins, as we now know the CIA has done.

by **Steno** on Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:20 pm

just watched the video on foxnews.com - my favorite part was when he said "i'd be ready to tell them anything," presumably to get the torturers to stop.

if I was abducted and tortured, I'd tell whoever was doing it what they wanted to hear to get it to stop, even if it wasn't the truth. I'm no hero. you all should watch that video and ask yourselves that question.

by **KnoxVegas** on Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:24 pm

StrykerFSU wrote:And we could get Clinton to admit he's got a thing for big girls. I kid, I kid.

Last time I checked, the appreciation of big, beautiful women did not get people killed.

by **OAKS** on Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:52 pm

I'm gonna have to go with waterboarding equals tortue on this one. Much like the former Assistant US Attorney General who had himself waterboarded.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/DOJ/story?id=3814076&page=1

As well, in 1947, the US sentenced a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, to 15 years of hard labor for waterboarding. But I guess it's ok to flip flop on some things huh?