Congress Authorized Torturing... U.S. Troops
Dave Price
That is, if you accept that waterboarding is torture. Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive notes the irony in the fact the procedure is routinely used to train U.S. troops in resisting interrogation:
If waterboarding is torture and torture is illegal, then didn't Congress break the law every year when they passed a military budget that contains funds specifically dedicated to conducting waterboarding as a matter of course?Hmmm, maybe this explains Congress' record low approval ratings. Torturing our troops probably doesn't poll well.
I'm curious how anti-waterboarding types feel about this. The military feels waterboarding is harmless enough that it can be used to condition U.S. soldiers to resist interrogation. So that begs a couple questions: are we going to treat terrorists with time-sensitive information that could save American lives better than our own soldiers? Or are we going to ban this training and leave our soldiers unprepared to resist interrogation, which could also cost lives?
Of course the effect would still be magnified on the detainees, they would be isolated and not know what was going to come next, and of course not be in control of what happens, but this seems to me to be a pretty simple, and easy to impliment brake on any sort of slipperly slope to torture as well as as evidence that what we are doing is acceptable.
[A corporal is waterboarding a prisoner with vital information, a Colonel walks in]
Colonel: Corporal, what the hell are you doing to that prisoner? You know waterboarding is an illegal form of interrogation! Explain yourself!
Corporal: I was, uh, training the prisoner to resist interrogation. As authorized byb Congress, sir.
Colonel: Ah, I see. Well then, carry on.
Training soldiers to resist torture is wholly different from torturing itself. This is apples and oranges.
Please - I beg you - tell me that was sarcasm?
Look at "The View" ratings lat year.
www.politicalwrinkles.com
Dave:
I can't help but imagine this scene:
[A corporal is waterboarding a prisoner with no information whatsoever. A Colonel walks in]
Colonel: Corporal, what the hell are you doing to that prisoner? You know waterboarding is an illegal form of interrogation! Explain yourself!
Corporal: I was, uh, training the prisoner to resist interrogation. As authorized byb Congress, sir.
Colonel: Ah, I see. Well then, carry on.
I also hope that was sarcasm. Waterboarding is only torture when not used on our troops? Yeargh.
Andrew,
Why would they waterboard someone with no information? For fun? What are you saying about the military here?
It's rather incongruous to say the same method of interrogation is humane enough the military can use it for training, but not humane enough that we would use it in a situation where we're trying to extract information about a terrorist attack.
HBarnes
Maniakes analogy isn't 100% but it is close to what I was driving at in terms of context mattering. Being waterboarded by your buddies in a controlled setting where you know exactly what's going on and how/when to stop it is wholly different from being waterboarded by people you don't know, who aren't necessarily concerned with your well-being, and when you don't know if they'll stop before or after you die.
A better analogy would be having sex with your friend versus having sex forced upon you. The act is the same and the physical damage it leaves is likely similar, but I think the difference in the psychological effects are obvious.
Mukasey Supports Waterboarding
Having experienced waterboarding at SERE school,I can attest that I lasted all of maybe 30 seconds. And though it was a part of training, there was no "safe" sign as to when to stop. The folks doing the training were sonsabitches and pulled no punches. Many of us were convinced they would've shot someone if they had had the chance and/or inclination.
In short, the training was very thorough and extremely realistic.
Were we fighting a uniformed enemy, the armed forces of a sovereign nation, then I would give consideration to the treatment that prisoners receive. However, we are not fighting the armed forces of a sovereign nation. We are fighting thugs and psychopaths who would kill or enslave us and destroy our own civilization. I can't morally allow them any more mercy than they show those they attack.
I have no qualms about using whatever methods are required to extract such information as is possible, and then killing the bastards.
Other's mileage may, of course, vary. However, it is worth noting that not one single enemy we have fought in the past century abided by the Geneva convention when dealing with our captured servicemen.
It would be better that we as a nation recognised the foolishmess of that treaty and abandoned it altogether.
It's hard to claim a moral high ground that consists of mountains of your own dead.
Respects,
So zach., it's not the act that makes torture in your eyes; it's the intent. Because the intent is to intimidate and coerce, that converts non-torture into torture.
By that reasoning, you will have to rule out any form of intimidation or coercion, because they have the same intent.
No, thank you.
not exactly. There is a continuum here and we are all drawing lines on it. To be honest I don't know, and don't think many of us (besides TimKindred, for one) know much about the effects of extreme psychological duress. My point is simply that it is not easy to imagine waterboarding in a truly unfamiliar and unsafe situation leaving psychological scars that wouldn't be left in other settings. The same can not be said about any form of intimidation or coercion. None of us are actually on the committee drawing the lines here, so most of this is academic and ordinarily I would stay out of it, but Dave asked for my opinion so I gave it.
I am not so much worried about protecting terrorists. I am worried about protecting the innocents they hide among and behind, who might get picked up during the course of normal police-work investigating an attack. We all know of cases of the wrongly accused, and thus the rights of the accused can't be ignored.
My point is simply that it is not HARD to imagine...
Didn't go to SERE school when I was in the service, but my cousin J did and gave me some fairly contemporaneous accounts. Wow. Tough-ass training. I salute you.
I say, if it's good enough for our toughest soldiers, it's good enough for vermin, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Semper Fi,
HBarnes
The difference, indeed, is intent...or rather, consent. We wouldn't be okay with the government simply snatching up American civilians and teaching them to withstand torture. We're pretty okay with teaching our own soldiers, though. Why the discrepancy? It's because those soldiers have consented to this in order that they might be better able to serve. Scum as they may be, unless a suspected (or even confirmed) terrorist has said "Ha! I dare you to try and extract the information from me by any means necessary! It can't be done!" then they haven't consented.
To my mind, "if it's good enough for our soldiers then it's good enough for terrorists" is the wrong conclusion to draw. The act itself is bad for our soldiers; people die in training accidents on a regular basis. It's that the gain to the soldier is seen as greater than the risk. Unless we can, with a straight face, say that we are benefiting the terrorist by torturing him then, as a free people claiming the moral high ground, we can't do it.
We can't afford to lose the moral high ground, either. Isn't that part of why soldiers are instructed to never leave a man behind? Without being the "good guys," we're just bullies we high-tech toys and our enemies are right to resist us.
come on, it's not all that odd ;)
Two separate statements there. Either you have evidence of soldiers dying on a regular basis from the waterboarding training, or you're condemning all military training on the basis that people have accidents. Which is it?
Come up with a definition of why waterboarding is bad without using loaded words like "torture."
Accordingly, for an act to be torture, it requires 1) effect (i.e. severe physical or mental suffering) AND 2) intent (i.e. eliciting confession or inflicting punishment). Martin, Zach did not say that intent was sufficient to make an act torture, he merely implied that intent is a necessary element. This matches exactly the definition of torture under international law, based on which*, training troops to withstand torture should not be considered torture itself.
*This of course only holds if this convention is the appropriate law to consider with respect to the illegality of torture. If there is another more pertinent law that contains a different definition of torture, then my argument should be discounted.
Nope, if waterboarding is torture, then by the definition you provided, using it on troops for training purposes still equals torture.
It's not done to make the soldier healthier: it puts them at a substantial risk. I have no idea if anyone has ever died during this type of training, but other forms of training the military uses do occasionally result in the trainee dying. The long-term benefits are seen to benefit that soldier and to outweigh the short-term risk of their death (or other physical harm). However, no one claims that something like waterboarding is beneficial to terrorists. It's using a person as a thing: they can only take so much strain, and if we can break them we can coerce them to give us what we want.
You made the claim, or were you just tossing in a false comparison to pad out your argument?
However, no one claims that something like waterboarding is beneficial to terrorists.
Imprisonment isn't beneficial to terrorists. Catching them isn't beneficial to terrorists. Disrupting their attacks isn't beneficial to terrorists. What's beneficial to terrorists isn't germane to the discussion.
I'm saying that waterboarding, assuming it's torture in other circumstances, isn't so if it's consensual.
Well, the "international law" quoted by DanielH disagrees with you.
Also, military training is extremely coercive, much as you describe: and if we can break them we can coerce them to give us what we want.
I don't see how the quoted section you highlight shows that waterboarding done in a training scenario is torture.
Well, the specific section included everything you needed, so let me help:
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
Of course, we don't actually torture our troops, because waterboarding isn't torture. But if you want to squeeze it into those definitions, then all of it has to apply.
Does it occur to you that we don't tain our soldiers what it feels like to have a drill pushed into your kneecap? Your fingernails extracted with pliers? Your genitals struck with hammers? But waterboarding can be trained for, to a limited extent, because it is an interrogation technique, not a torture technique.
Waterboarding in particular is a technique where the damage, to the extent that it occurs, is psychological and not physical, and is thus dependent upon the setting in which the technique was used and the intent behind it.
Does it occur to you that waterboarding can be trained for because it doesn't debilitate someone like having their kneecaps drilled would? And the distinction between trainable and not trainable is unrelated to the distinction between torture and interrogation?
Perhaps I didn't explain things well. Anti-torture training is a type of military training. In military training people die. Therefore, anti-torture training carries the risk of death. Do you dispute this?
Let me ask this to determine if it's torture:
What would you do if you were snatched off the street and waterboarded by the government? How about if you had been arrested on suspicion of a crime? What about if you were in prison? Would it be okay?
"Anti-torture training is a type of military training. In military training people die. Therefore, anti-torture training carries the risk of death. Do you dispute this?"
Snakes are a type of animal. Some animals have fur. Therefore snakes have fur. Do you dispute this?
Good point; I was in a hurry and didn't double-check.
However, is anyone going to say, with a straight face, that there is no risk of death or serious bodily injury from waterboarding? Apparently John B. Irving wants a reason beyond it possibly being torture and refuses to believe it's not dangerous.
Seriously, how can someone make the argument that just because we do something to our soldiers means that it's okay to do to other people. Would we be okay with rounding up our prisoners and sending them off to war? How about sending them overseas for fifteen months at a time? Would it be okay if we did it to your mother or your wife or your daughter? Why not?
I don't know how often SERE training in resisting waterboarding results in injury or death. I expect it is quite minimal and safer then a lot of other training that is undergone, but I don't have any data on it. You apparently do not either.
Your other questions seem quite strange to me. Obviously, absent anything else we wouldn't just round up people and send them oversees. However, we might do those things for good reason. For example, many advocate deportation of illegal aliens i.e. rounding up people and sending them overseas. Similarly, we wouldn't advocate imprisoning peoples mothers or girlfriends for no reason, but if my girlfriend murdered someone, I would understand why she was incarcerated. We wouldn't advocate shooting someone in cold blood, but shooting an enemy soldier in the course of a war is exactly the choice to take.
It seems obvious to me that we wouldn't treat enemy combatants who we believe are terrorists the exact same way we would treat American citizens who we don't believe have committed any crime.
Beyond that, the idea that 'if you wouldn't want this done to your granny it is torture' is bizarre. There are lots of things I wouldn't want done to people that are not torture. I wouldn't want someone to call my granny a bitch, but torture it isn't.
I certainly wouldn't want anyone to treat my granny in any way that would cause her to feel that she had to reveal information that she didn't want to give. However, I want those who have knowledge of terror organizations and plans to be treated in such a way that they will reveal that sort of information.
Obviously maintaining our own humanity, living up to our own standands, and getting reliable information are valid concerns. 'Torture' is a term that contains within it as a definition things that don't rise to that standard. There are certainly though other uncomfortable things used to elicit cooperation that remain within that standard. Waterboarding is either in one category or the other. It seems to me that if it is something we can do to our own troops, that is a good arguement that it isn't so horrific that it falls into the category of 'torture.' Clearly it isn't pleasant, and I would prefer never to undergo it myself, but there are many things that that is true of that are not torture.
Okay, here's the deal: do please get right back to me on how terrible waterboarding is, and how something must be done about it, and how its defenders have no moral or ethical grounds to stand upon when we're not sexually mutilating more than. . .
. . .hmm, let's be absurdly generous here. . .
. . .say, THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE AS MANY of our own completely and utterly innocent child Citizens on an annual basis for no better reason than blatant, inarguable, and indefensible sexist bigotry.
We sexually mutilate -- as in permanently, for life -- over a million little boys in this country every year, while federal legislation protects their female 'peers' in specific, sexually bigoted and femelitist exclusivity from even the merest nick.
You can't even complain about waterboarding being 'more important because of the State's involvement' since we have not only the State's gross violation of the principle of universal rights laid out above -- every single time another baby boy gets mutilated -- but the State's actual funding of this grotesque child abuse through medical welfare as well.
And you -- you're all bent out of shape over, at the ridiculous most, a thousand likely terrorists getting waterboarded? In order to break their state-of-war operational security, map their conspiratorial networks, and thereby deny them resources and apprehend their fanatic totalitarian death-cult murderers and murder-enablers, in order to protect not only the normal, healthy, sane, decent, everyday people they wish to brutally dominate through civilian-targeted violence and fear but the very principles of freedom, tolerance, justice, and self-determination themselves?
Tell me -- how is anyone even remotely aware of any of this supposed to take you seriously?
Wait...a person is a hypocrite for opposing torture if they don't denounce circumcision as well? What? I'm genuinely baffled. Given that some people are ordered by God to do this I think you're going to have a rough time equating this with torture, which must never be done.
Look, I can think of two main edges the United States has over our opponents: our technology and our status as "good guys." If we engage in torture we cease to be seen the "good guys." I believe that in the long run this will cost us far more dearly than whatever potential gain we get for doing evil.
I'm not concerned about violating our prisoners' Constitutional rights: they don't have any. Regardless of whatever they've done and whatever they know, though, they retain basic human rights. We violate those at our own peril.
It would probably help your bafflement if you stopped grossly misrepresenting what people actually say. My comments above were not about people's hypocrisy; they were about people's sense of proportion when it comes to the abuse of other human beings.
How you managed to find any kind of accusation of 'hypocrisy' out of what I wrote is beyond me.
First of all, please do explain how that reasoning of yours is supposed to work when it comes to the genital mutilation of little girls, or, for that matter, of grown adult men and women, such as was done by religious fanatics in the indonesian moluccas relatively recently.
Second of all, I'm not comparing it to torture. I'm comparing it to waterboarding.
Third of all, I'm pretty sure you agree with and accept limitations on "I was ordered by God," as being a valid justification for all sorts of violent abusive actions; that being the case, it is inherently and necessarily incumbent upon you to explain why the violent abusive act of routine and ritual male prepucectomy should not be subject to those limitations as well -- so long as you're going to cite "ordered by God" as a rationale.
Well, then, why are you disagreeing with me? Because by any possible rational standard of comparison, routine and ritual male genital amputation in the usa is many. many times more 'evil' than waterboarding; in terms of victims alone, AT LEAST THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE larger. So what are you trying to accomplish by focusing on the comparatively miniscule issue of waterboarding -- and, again, because you do, how am I or any other informed person supposed to take you at all seriously?
Over a million little boys are sexually mutilated in this country every year, out of nothing more than blatant and inarguable sexist bigotry, but you're more upset and interested in addressing, at the ludicrously generous estimate, maybe a thousand likely actual terrorists or their criminal conspirators being subjected to waterboarding in order to protect innocent civilians and the principles of freedom and self-determination themselves?
Numbers of victims, actual harm, intentions, justifications, degree of human rights violation, etc. -- by any rational metric, routine and ritual male genital mutilation dwarfs waterboarding as a serious and meaningful issue.
So what then is the purpose of your insistence on the reverse case -- of treating as a serious issue the waterboarding of people who not only believe that but actually behave as if terrorizing people into obedience through mass-murder and violence is valid behavior, while dismissing the sexual mutilation, for no better reason than sheer sexist bigotry, of over a million children annually? What are you trying to accomplish?
Mom died June 22nd of esophogeal cancer, feel free to waterboard my ex-wife, she'll get a kick out of it, and I have no daughters.
Also, none of them are terrorists potentially with information aiding the national security interests of the U.S.
We violate those at our own peril.
Hogwash. We aren't maiming, scarring, or by any rational definition "torturing" these people, we're putting them through an extremely uncomfortable procedure to gain accurate information. What peril is there? Our soliders may be trated badly by our opponents? How much worse can it get for them, when Al Qaeda and others routinely commit real, old-school torture, often followed up by beheadings?
The peril is letting our security interests continue to be defined down. Zero effective interrogation of prisoners, full Geneva convention protections for enemies not signed on and only accidentally following any part of them once in a blue moon on Leap Day, rules of engagement for our soldiers which reward terrorist behavior and endanger our troops.
Allowing the short-sighted ignorant chattering classes to redefine interrogation as prohibited behavior is a far greater peril than making jihadis faces wet.
And thus the slippery slope is demonstrated. Now taking away our Constitutional rights is "torture". Next week, disagreeing with liberals will be "torture".
Because the government isn't circumcising people, especially not involuntarily (parents have the right to make this type of decision). Your point, which I don't know that I disagree with, would be more relevant if we were talking about abortion or animal rights.
What does this have to do with a slippery-slope argument? I'm not saying waterboarding will lead to the quartering of soldiers in your home. I'm saying that neither waterboarding nor the loss of freedom of religion leaves a physical mark, which is what some seem to be saying is required for torture to exist.
So basically all of your arguments against waterboarding come down to bad comparisons.
We were slapped around. We had to do a lot of pushups. We were stuffed into very small boxes and left there for long periods of time (this one was especially tough for me, since I'm 6'4" and weigh in the low 200s). During interrogations, we had some of the most rancid smoke forced into our faces while we were huddled in a corner, making it impossible to breathe normally (and I was a smoker at the time). We were forced to sit naked in a lake in the woods. In November. In Maine.
And they left out all the torture. Because we can't torture our own troops, just as we can't torture the enemy.
Waterboarding ain't torture, IMNSHO. Oh, and if you think that SERE students are secure in the knowledge that they're safe, that none of their "buddies" are going to actually hurt them, that this is all just a training course and we'll have tea and biscuits while we sing Kumbaya when we're done....
...you're talking out your ass. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're a fool. If you've been through it and can say that no student believes what they're going through is real, we can have that discussion. But you want to tell me, never having been a SERE student, that it's not like the real deal? I don't want to be any more insulting than I've already been, so I'll just say, "you're wrong."
"It's just training, conducted by your friends." What a pathetically naïve statement.
[sigh]
Except, of course, for how the State, through its agents, is significantly involved in sexually mutilating little boys, as I pointed out in my original post (and which is, furthermore, nigh-universally done involuntarily to the child victim; see below):
Second of all, no, as a matter of fact, parents do not have a right to make 'this type' of decision. According to the actual standards of law on assault, it's a criminal violation. The problem is that nobody will enforce the existing laws when it comes to the sexual mutilation of little boys.
See, all normal healthy functional human body parts are assigned by default a standard minimum value such that they should not be amputated without a direct medical health necessity. And there is not a single valid medical or legal citation to justify the exclusion of the male prepuce from coverage by that default standard. It applies to the male prepuce every bit as much as it does to the female prepuce or to any other normal healthy functional human body part. They all possess it.
The problem is that almost everyone behaves as though somehow, magically! the male prepuce uniquely does not -- despite the complete and utter absence of any objective scientific or legal validity or support whatsoever for that POV.
I'm sure it would be nicer for you if that meaningfully mattered, let alone was true; unfortunately, though, it not only doesn't but even isn't. My point doesn't need to be any more relevant than it already crushingly is, and what's worse, your examples only serve to make it appear as though you value little boys less than not just fetuses but mere pets.
Which is not exactly a positive display of good character for anybody, you included.
Has anyone made that argument? Certainly if something does cause physical damage, that is a good argument for it being torture, but I don't think that anyone has argued that just because something doesn't cause physical damage it isn't torture.
The slippery slope is:
1. Assertion: something which is arduous but leaves no physical mark is torture.
2. Taking away our Constitutional rights is arduous but leaves no physical mark.
3. Ergo, taking away our Constitutional rights is now torture.
Sorry, no.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.