Waterboarding Options

[Robert]

In the last few years there have been dozens of stories about waterboarding.
For those who don't know what waterboarding is an Interrogation technique which has been around for 100's of years.
By no means is it anything new.

What really surprised me was how over hyped this whole story has been since it initially broke in 2005.
The news stories did their best to politicize this and make it sound as a wide on-going practice.
I would agree in a perfect world we all wish we lived in, something as repugnant as this wouldn't exist.
The question of whether or not it should be done is for a different day.
My interest is in the fact there have been dozens of stories about this in the last few years making it sound like an ongoing issue when it hasn't been done since 2003.
If you don't find that strange, then how about they way most of the news stories were written.
After reading these news stories, most people will have the impression it's a common practice.

So let's play a game.
Seeing as how there have been dozens of news stories about this in the last 3 years,
How many terror suspects do you think have been waterboarded.
A) More Than 100
B) 50-100
C) 25-50
D) 10-25
E) 5-10
F) less Than 5

If you guessed anything besides F you would be wrong.
Wrong but understandably so, after how publicized this issue has been in the last two years.
The actual number would be 3.
Why is it most news stories left out that fact or buried it at the end of the story?
Probably because that simple fact would minimize the story right down to being so insignificant it wouldn't be seen as news worthy.

We even know exactly who was interrogated this way.
1) The person who helped plan 9-11
2) The person who planned the attack on the U.S. Cole, he even rented the boat used in the attack killing 17 sailors
3) The person who beheaded Daniel Pearl.
Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I'm not going to shed a tear for whatever might be done to any of those 3.

Another point I found to be very interesting, is how outspoken some people have been.
Very quick to say how terrible the whole idea of waterboarding is, "No one should have to endure that"
Cry a river, how wrong it was to do it to those 3 people when there have been 1000's of Americana's who have had the same thing done to them.
Every Navy SEAL until recently was waterboarded as part of their SERE ( Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training.
Dozens of CIA interrogators had to go through that as part of their training.
Dozens of Navy Pilots went thru a training program similar to SERE which included waterbaording.
So I really have to wonder how some people can condemn waterboarding the likes of the 3 killers above but then there is no outcry over 1000's of Americans going thru the same thing.

Just something to keep it in perspective.

[Hellfighter]

I think everyone -that is anti-waterboarding- are kidding themselves that when push comes to shove and a definite inpending catastrophic threat in our/allied society is at hand, that the most ghastly techniques would not be used on a known terrorist who has the info to stop the act and is stubbornly refusing to do so while faced with a Mr.Niceguy inquisition.

My whole take on this is;
Governments need to be utterly honest with that fact and explain it;
All this lying crap by the govt. to look good/innocent, only sows the seeds of distrust between the voters and their government.... if a government is found out to be lying by saying they don't employ certain tactics OR they explain away a torture tactic as 'oh its not so bad you know-compared to 'REAL' torture used by etc etc'..... then the people react in ways to wonder what else its government is lying about.
eg, it would be a huge oversight imo to actually think we can guess accurately how many people we have actually 'waterboarded' - what the govt admits to and what the media can find out is a huge leap from behind the scene actualities....
for example-
1] Was it public knowlege people were getting hustled onto planes and lost in obscurity to be tortured because their names appeared on a terror suspect' list at the airport?

2] Would we've known about Abu Ghraib horrors if by chance photos of the episode were not leaked out? -even now we can't find out who was responsible -> or who at the top level would care to admit it.... typical of this administration, major foul-ups are occuring all over the place -political/anti-constitutional/military direction[or its lacking] and there's nothing but cover-ups to inhibit people from finding out the real truth.

3] Keep in mind too that the CIA have teams all over the world in hotspots. Bush even stated right after 9-11 in his Address that alot of what happens in the war on terror would not be known by the public /ie, fought in the shadows. So you can reasonably assume that the CIA have 'shadow units/teams' set up wherever there are hotspots in the world in a remote village in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Philippines perhaps- etc., and that some instances of their more wilder interrogations of obscure 'terror suspects'/captured militants, will not make there way to 'official' tallies of tortured 'enemy stats.
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My second major issue is the ignorant terminology 'terror suspect' -the scope it covers is too vast and lacks sophistication in a way the public can comprehend. This has been the biggest goof-up by the administration. In my opinion there are two types of terror threats that should be employed;


One should use the police phrase "person of interest" and the second is simply "terrorist".

Person of interest would include;
Those individuals being investigated based of second hand info pointing to the person as 'probably' being or having links to terrorists. For them only a thorough interrogation procedure should be pursued -NO TORTURE nor shipping off in clandestine ways to countries that torture. Think if YOU were innocent [like many have been found so far] and had to go through the current ordeal knowing you were innocent but instead are treated like scum with no rights you are ordinarily privileged to have, then you wouldn't be a happy camper -let alone mentally wrecked for life to various degrees.
I only wished this type of category was used in the case of the Abu Ghraib tragedy by the ass-hat clowns in the Pentagon/ CIA /Prison Administrators/ and baffoon guards following/interpreting 'orders'.Here's what we know about 'terror suspects' in that prison -alot of them were innocent simply in there based on neighbourhood 'informants' -these were regular joes who had not an ounce of terrorist inclinations in their bodies. They needed only to face an in-depth interrogation rather than the 'guilty until innocent' concept imposed on them and for which they suffered [and sometimes died] needlessly as innocent individuals.
Senator McCain talked with 'terrorist' prisoners in Iraq and THEY told him that their biggest surge in recruitment came from the fiasco caused by the Pentagon and guards let loose at Abu Ghraib. Think realistically here- how many relatives of those who were inncoent and suffered in Abu Ghraib turned into actual terrorists out of outrage and with an axe to grind - resulting in hundreds of soldiers and thousands of civilians dying that normally wouldn't have IF the torture focus had remained on terrorists and NOT 'persons of interest'. Before you may be inclined to argue, read part two below AND google up those infamous prison pics and ask yourself how many of the bloody messes in those pics were regular Joe/Ahmeds picked up one day on an informants 'suspiscions'. What I deem as this initial interrogation procedure could actually raise the notch for the 'person of interest' to the level of 'terrorist class' which would constitute the following;

Regarding my 'Terrorists class';
No holds barred for these 'people'. And the government should honestly state that. Apart from the soft approach that could be used to entice info from them, there could optimally be various levels of torture-mostly in the non-horrific level.... but for hardcore terrorists -the sky's the limit regarding options to use on them.
Terrorists would include those; caught red-handed -ie-in combat / planting /carrying bombs /documents or those who broke down in initial interrogations to be revealed definitely as terror members.

It's hypocritical that a terror 'person of interest' who is innocent would undergo torture while an actual 'terrorist' would be treated 'nicely' if the soft 'approach' of questioning is working. Furthermore they-the 'terrorists'- would begrudgingly be afforded semi-star status if they play ball with their captors. Imagine if you will the lengths the US govt went to after WW2 to hide the fact that selected nazi war criminals/scientists were given a new home in the USA to assist in rocketry programs [war and space].... and the same with Japanese scientists regarding bio-chemical weapons given a free pass for their 'knowlegde' gained when they experimented on Chinese prisoners in an infamous prison/experiment camp -unit 731- testing these horrific substances on civilians.
Some say its Japan's Auschwitz... but imagine it possibly being worse -as in real Dante's inferno -with no inmates surviving it by war's end.
Don't be eating if you're going to read this link [no pics]...
http://chineseinvancouver.blogspot.com/200...-auschwitz.html


This post has been edited by Hellfighter: 03/31/08 2:37pm