Evidence of Water Boarding http://tinyurl.com/3yj4th

I tend to lean with Phil on this, waterboarding has not proved itself worthy of a torturing technique, so until the government can prove it does extract enemy information, it should not be used. If all WBing provides is lies, it will kill more troops than those saved. The rack or traveling irons might have a better affect of extracting truth. I like the hypodermic needle in the eye torture where you remove the fluid insde the eye and then tell him if he doesn't tell the truth you squirt the liquid on the floor and fill the socket with air. Of course you only do one eye at a time.

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Which brings us to the second part of Mukasey's "new kind of terrorist" argument, the one that suggests waterboarding works wonders. There is scant evidence that this is the case. For example, when used against alleged al-Qaida mastermind Abu Zubaydah, waterboarding apparently produced a stream of statements from Zubaydah of such dubious quality—according to journalist Ron Suskind—that intelligence officers now widely believe any evidence gleaned from Zubaydah to be utter garbage.

Finally, Mukasey's new kind of terrorist justification implies that waterboarding can't be taken off the table, because this new enemy has some kind of heightened intelligence value; that an al-Qaida detainee like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed might know more than your average Nazi spy or North Vietnamese colonel would have known in previous wars. This might be the strongest argument for coercive interrogation, but it still assumes too much. We rarely (if ever) know enough about a particular detainee to determine whether he knows something worth torturing him for. Even if he talks, we have little ability to verify the confession's truth and often must caveat it as the product of torture, as has been done with KSM's post-waterboarding statements. Worse yet, over the six years since 9/11, we have never stopped to systematically weigh the enormous, almost incalculable strategic costs of torture against the speculative benefits (if any) to be gleaned from its use.

If there really were tactical or operational reasons for us to continue waterboarding, you might expect the military to favor it. And yet the JAGs and the military oppose the technique in the strongest terms. They oppose it because they recognize it's not particularly effective, and because they have to worry about our soldiers being subject to such treatment if captured. Most of all, they oppose it because they recognize the value of clarity for maintaining the discipline of America's military. As one of us has written, "[T]here are few slopes more slippery than that from small war crimes to large ones. Any wartime action, no matter how heinous, can always be justified by some battlefield exigency."

Why can't we renounce waterboarding once and for all?
I thought waterboarding was surfing.......
By Phillip Carter and Dahlia Lithwick
http://tinyurl.com/2k6lqu

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One Tin Soldier Walked Away....................

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...laryTeam08.jpg

The landscape on this one is pretty clear.

Waterboarding was authorized by a Presidential finding in 2002, and amplified by a Gonzales legal opinion in 2005.

The CIA has actually done it, "how many times" is not entirely clear, but at least three that they admit to in public. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is one of those, and there are two others.

"Some" US agencies have now declared they "will not do it", the CIA is one of them, and the mil is another, but of course there are "many" black agencies in the US, not the least of which are the "independent contractors" that work directly for the President.

Mukasey is unwilling to take a direct stand on it, because "he has not been briefed". Well..... how "briefed" does he really need to be? Admiral Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, testified before a Senate Committee on the public airwaves, that these kinds of interrogation techniques "will continue".

I mean, that tells you everything you need to know, right?

They're going to do it. The CIA and the mil won't be the ones doing it, but "someone's" going to do it anyway.

"Who" it is, doesn't really matter, right? It's being done "on behalf of the US government", and therefore on behalf of We the People.

I submit to you (all), that the effectiveness of waterboarding, isn't even the issue here.

It's the perception of waterboarding, that's the issue. It's the perception that the US government is now engaging in a form of torture which has been recognized as such ever since the Spanish Inquisition (and probably even before that), is prevented by law and that is also institutionalized in international treaties to which the US is a signatory.

That's the issue. Not whether it "works" or not.

It is illegal for the millitary to use waterboarding. Only the CIA and FBI can use waterboarding legally.

I could really care less what they do to someone they find out to be a real terrorist, but maybe that's just me

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The civil war we fought with guns was a whole lot easier than the one we fight now with words.

Well, there is that....

I mean - yeah, this one's kinda wierd. I've been checking into the "theory" behind this, a little bit, and I don't understand it yet, but I'm almost there...

'Cause here's what happens: there are some circumstances (I mean, according to the "thought" around this subject, like the Geneva Conventions and so on), in which it's actually "better" to shoot someone on the spot, rather than to torture him.

If you simply execute someone, then you can make the claim that he was a "battlefield combatant in an actual battle", even if the guy was a spy or something, right? I mean, that argument, would probably fly, legally speaking. I don't think they could touch you on that one, treaty-wise. I mean, 'cause "legally" speaking, that would be the difference between doing it to a terrorist in Afghanistan, and doing it to a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Yeah, I kinda see now, why Mukasey didn't wanna say anything - I mean, after just half an hour checking into this thing, I can see that it's a very tangled web indeed. I don't know if I can make sense of it anytime soon, I gotta lot of other stuff going on, but if I find anything interesting I'll post it up here for y'all.

Do we check for a terrorist green card in his wallet. cuz I don't see anyway of getting from the suspect category to the real terrorist category without a forced confession - do you?

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One Tin Soldier Walked Away....................

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p...laryTeam08.jpg

Ohhh boo hoo - they waterboarded the islamofascists .... sniff!..sniff! Gimme a kleenex! SNNNOOOOOOOOORTTTTT!

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

Blade, I'm down with what you're saying bud, but it's not the issue.

That's not the issue.

The issue is, whether it should be a matter of US policy.

That's an entirely different question, wouldn't you say?

You know, like, there are other "options" in this space - like, for instance, the government could simply "do it" and "not tell me about it" - and I repeat the question I keep asking, which no one up here has yet been able to answer -

"So, like, why are they telling me about it?"

Not only that, it's immoral. Oops, forgot - not in the constitution!

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

Yeah, just another internal contradiction for that idiotic "public morality" model.....

Nah Blade, that aligns. When it's "me" doing it, it's "immoral", but when it's the "government" doing it, it's just stupid.

That's what I keep telling you, right?