Not crappy, but flappy. It flapped its wings, and soared right over your head.
The point is this: If torture is OK, then it's OK. Where do we draw the line?
That's the whole point. We are debating whether or not one thing qualifies as "torture" over another. Simply hurting someone, without reason, is not an interrogation technique used to save lives.
Waterboarding a known terrorist mastermind with information that can save lives, but is refusing cooperate, IS.
I don't see it as torture, and I say it's ok. When you say torture, do you list off waterboarding people that revealed life saving information and helped us stop a future terrorist attack?
No, you go off about some out of control military people who violated everything they were supposed to do, to harm some captives and were rightfully court marshaled for it.
Those two events are not the same.
I can use the same argument about shooting kneecaps that has been used to promote waterboarding: It is certainly better than a terrorist attack that takes innocent lives.
Waterboarding does not cause massive intense suffering, nor does it permanently harm the individual. It simply simulates the feeling of drowning.
As for the argument that waterboarding is not torture, that is simply not defensible. We did prosecute Japanese soldiers after WWII for having waterboarded our soldiers. It was torture when Pol Pot used it. It was torture when Torquemada used it. It was torture when we used it.
Actually the Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for far more than waterboarding. Not to mention that we used waterboarding in Vietnam, Philippines. It's been used by the UK, France (shockingly) and a few other countries.
Nor is waterboarding the only form of torture that has been used.
It is simply indefensible for a nation that believes in human rights to engage in any sort of torture unless you do use the argument that it saves innocent lives.
And, if it does save innocent lives, more lives than it takes, then any sort of torture that works should be acceptable, shouldn't it?
No, only an interrogation method that doesn't cause "the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty."
Ramon Navarro, described being subjected to waterboarding. "Not so painful," he said, "but one becomes unconscious — like drowning in the water."
Again, you are mixing topics if you are going to refer to unauthorized and unacceptable practices that are not valid interrogation techniques.
Now, I'm all for not using enhanced interrogation methods, provided you have an alternative.
but if you just follow their statements it's not like figuring out the Davinci Code to see Sean Hannity, Druggie Limbaugh and the like have NO PROBLEM rationalizing torture as a good thing America has a right to do.
