Waterboarding

[Jim]

We seem have to reached a new low when confirming a new AG who, for some reason, can't conclude that waterboarding is torture. It's shameful that enough Reps and Democrats voted for this tap dancer.

 

Daniel Lavine, once acting assistant AG conclusively determined that waterboarding was torture. He was asked by the administration to make a determination and went as far as to have himself subjected to the procedure. Even though he knew he was in trusted hands, he thought for sure he would drown. The act is simply torture. Because of his independent assessment he was shown the door. Quickly. A Washington Post article:

 

 

 

Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

By Evan Wallach

The Washington Post

 

Sunday 04 November 2007

 

As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

 

Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."

 

That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death.

 

That is,the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.

 

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government - whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community - has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

 

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture.... I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

 

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

 

In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:

 

A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

 

The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim:

 

Q: Was it painful?

 

A: Not so painful, but one becomes unconscious. Like drowning in the water.

 

Q: Like you were drowning?

 

A: Drowning - you could hardly breathe.

 

Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:

 

They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.

 

And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air.... They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.

 

As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

 

More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to ... the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."

 

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."

 

The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

 

We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is - as well as what it ought to be.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

 

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which was ratified by Congress and is therefore U.S. law per the Constitution (and upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 6/06 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld), clearly prohibits torture in general and waterboarding specifically. Our new shit-stain excuse for an attorney general should have had no problem in referencing the following section from Article 3:

 

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including...those placed hors de combat by…detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely. To this end the following acts are…prohibited at any time and in any place:

(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

© outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

 

But waterboarding is a smoke screen for the much worse things U.S. personnel have done:

 

From a 2/04 International Committee of the Red Cross Report summary:

 

“We have seen evidence of federal government employees engaging in acts such as soaking a prisoner’s hand in alcohol and setting it on fire, administering electric shocks, subjecting prisoners to repeated sexual abuse and assault, including sodomy with a bottle, raping a juvenile prisoner, kicking and beating prisoners in the head and groin, putting lit cigarettes inside a prisoner’s ear, force-feeding a baseball to a prisoner, chaining a prisoners hands-to-feet in a fetal position for 24 hours without food, water, or access to a toilet, and breaking a prisoner’s shoulders.”

 

Edited November 9, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[joblo7]

torture works! plus you get people to tell you stuff too.!

[lizard_brain]

Used in various methods and incarnations by the Spanish Inquisition, the Gestapo, the Khmer Rouge, and the CIA.

[tvashtarkatena]

torture works! plus you get people to tell you stuff too.!

 

Sadly, torture doesn't work. THe victim talks, alright. They tell you exactly what you want to hear, but seldom anything useful.

 

Decades of espionage and law enforcement has proven that the use of informants is far, far more effective at gathering high quality information.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

torture works! plus you get people to tell you stuff too.!

 

it works? great, then I'm for it!

 

I think the point is - it doesn't work, though. Sorry, V7.

[chucK]

it works? great, then I'm for it!

 

Even if it did work, there'd be a problem with it being used without discretion as in Abu Grhaib. For example, there is a solution that would work to stop the ethnic strife in Iraq, the FINAL solution. But we're not about to do that for obvious reasons.

 

Unless you believe the Bush admin is TOTALLY evil, then you have to concede that at least somebody must think torture works.

 

Evidence that it doesn't work is a good reason to not torture people (especially those not even given a right to trial), but it's not the only one.

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Even if it did work, there'd be a problem with it being used without discretion as in Abu Grhaib. For example, there is a solution that would work to stop the ethnic strife in Iraq, the FINAL solution. But we're not about to do that for obvious reasons.

 

Unless you believe the Bush admin is TOTALLY evil, then you have to concede that at least somebody must think torture works.

 

Evidence that it doesn't work is a good reason to not torture people (especially those not even given a right to trial), but it's not the only one.

 

 

it depends on what you define as torture. as we've discussed before - some of the left-wingers are saying that making things "uncomfortable" for prisoners is torture, or threats to them (you'll never get out of here, your family is dead, whatever). There are gray areas, and I think some of the stuff cited as torture is NOT, and does work.

 

[lizard_brain]

torture works! plus you get people to tell you stuff too.!

 

Sadly, torture doesn't work. THe victim talks, alright. They tell you exactly what you want to hear, but seldom anything useful.

 

Decades of espionage and law enforcement has proven that the use of informants is far, far more effective at gathering high quality information.

 

Torture isn't for gathering reliable information - it's for dehumanizing individuals and groups, either directly through torture itself, or through fear of torture or the guilt or feelings of worthlessness for doing nothing or not being able to do enough about it.

[archenemy]

I'll bet Mr. Pearl would have appreciated these rules.

 

Oh wait, only we have to follow them.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I'll bet Mr. Pearl would have appreciated these rules.

 

Oh wait, only we have to follow them.

 

where does interrogation end, and "torture" begin

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I'll bet Mr. Pearl would have appreciated these rules.

 

Oh wait, only we have to follow them.

 

Yes, we do, if we are to be a nation of laws and not whim. And if we choose to be a civilized and humane people. You may personally wish to follow the lead of those who beheaded Mr. Pearl and their fellows. Personally, however, I'm damn glad to be on the only morally defensible side of this particular issue.

[archenemy]

I'd say when they chained him to the truck engine, it qualified as torture. Even if someone disagreed with that, I am sure they would agree that sawing his head off definately qualifies as torture.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'll bet Mr. Pearl would have appreciated these rules.

 

Oh wait, only we have to follow them.

 

where does interrogation end, and "torture" begin

 

Read the Article 3 prohibitions aloud and you'll likely find that this is a fairly simple question to answer correctly.

Edited November 9, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[archenemy]

I think defending morals is very important. The only thing more important may be to defend a person's life.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'd say when they chained him to the truck engine, it qualified as torture. Even if someone disagreed with that, I am sure they would agree that sawing his head off definately qualifies as torture.

 

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, big old horrible terrorists doing really bad scary things.

 

So we should, too. Or so your logic goes.

[tvashtarkatena]

A life lived without morals or purpose isn't worth very much.

 

If simply being alive was the absolute highest objective for being, you know, breathing, eating, shitting, then why, throughout history, have so many sacrificed their lives for something higher?

 

Safety is, ultimately, the worst form of prison.

 

 

 

 

[archenemy]

I'd say when they chained him to the truck engine, it qualified as torture. Even if someone disagreed with that, I am sure they would agree that sawing his head off definately qualifies as torture.

 

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, big old horrible terrorists doing really bad scary things.

 

So we should, too. Or so your logic goes.

I don't think you know my logic. You dismiss whatever I say out of hand too quickly to consider it. But that is okay, you are going to be right no matter what the conversation is, so bringing up other options is a pointless excersize with you.

[archenemy]

A life lived without morals or purpose isn't worth very much.

 

If simply being alive was the absolute highest objective for being, you know, breathing, eating, shitting, then why, throughout history, have so many sacrificed their lives for something higher?

 

Safety is, ultimately, the worst form of prison.

 

 

 

Safety, ultimately, is the only requirement of government.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'd say when they chained him to the truck engine, it qualified as torture. Even if someone disagreed with that, I am sure they would agree that sawing his head off definately qualifies as torture.

 

Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, big old horrible terrorists doing really bad scary things.

 

So we should, too. Or so your logic goes.

I don't think you know my logic. You dismiss whatever I say out of hand too quickly to consider it. But that is okay, you are going to be right no matter what the conversation is, so bringing up other options is a pointless excersize with you.

 

'Exercise'. I only dismiss the really stupid stuff you post. Step up to your intellect.

[archenemy]

Someone else already stepped on it.

[archenemy]

Maybe I can figure out a way to have an "Ignore only the stupid stuff" button.

We IT people get off building stuff like that.

[tvashtarkatena]

A life lived without morals or purpose isn't worth very much.

 

If simply being alive was the absolute highest objective for being, you know, breathing, eating, shitting, then why, throughout history, have so many sacrificed their lives for something higher?

 

Safety is, ultimately, the worst form of prison.

 

 

 

Safety, ultimately, is the only requirement of government.

 

Then you're nothing more than another inmate.

 

I believe that we can do a lot better than just 'staying safe', both in our personal and collective lives. Exploration, stewardship, creativity, great parties....

[lizard_brain]

Let's all smoke meth

[tvashtarkatena]

Someone else already stepped on it.

 

Don't even think about whining to me. It excites my predatory instinct.