Obama a war criminal

[Deadeye]

Because people have been treated worse, does not mean that something else isn't torture. Anecdotes, sadly, aren't evidence in a debate.

You have ignored the thesis of my post, which is, we will not torture valuable American assets such as naval, Air Force and Army aviators (Non-aviators also underwent training to help them survive capture). Torture often does permanent damage, either emotional of physical. We just can't take the chance when dealing with our people.

Waterboarding was a training technique that was so benign that it only caused about 15 seconds of discomfort and recovery time was usually less than a minute. The longest average recovery time was two minutes. If you believe that is torture, especially when I offered you examples of real torture then you are not living in the relm of reality.
If you believe that we will torture our men then you do not understand how difficult it is for people to attain such a high degree of training. They are simply too valuable to torture. Our enemies do that.

[Cruella]

The "waterboarding" you are talking about, which I've seen, and the waterboarding used in torture are not the same thing. You're also ignoring the psychological difference in knowing something will happen only once and will last for a specified period of time, that there is medical aid nearby, that there is a group of people all doing the same thing, to the methods used in torture, where no certainties exist.

You told a sad story, sure, but you're ignoring certain facts, mainly that torture has very little to do with pain.

[Disinformant]

There is lots of evidence to the contrary. Cheney is trying to make the stories of successful strong interrogation tactics public, so that we can see how really successful strong interrogation was/is.

As for waterboarding. IT IS NOT TORTURE! A great many of my fellow naval aviators were put on the water board. Average recovery time as under 2 minutes. You cough and sputter for a few seconds afterwards.

You have to admit that we will not torture our own people. Pilots are very expensive to train and we cannot afford to injure them. They will harrass them if they believe that the pilots are going into a threatre where they will likely be captured and tortured. They make the experience hard so that the pilots will be emotionally prepared if they are captured. The training is hard. It was also TS when I was "in".
Apparently a Top Secred document is for public dissemination nowadays.

It has nothing to do with water-boarding. That isn't the issue. In our torture camps, we sodomize you with chemicals, beat people, leave people tied up to the ceiling while we let dogs attack them, and we kill people too!

Reality check:
Taguba Report: Iraq Prisoner Abuse Investigation of the U.S. 800th Military Police Brigade
DETAINEES DEPICT ABUSES BY GUARD IN PRISON IN IRAQ - New York Times

I met another aviator who was shot down in Loas. He told me that he had to walk to Hanoi, a distance of hundreds of miles. It took him several years to do it. He said that he was suspended by a rope tied to his hands over his head in a cess pool up to his neck each night. He said he was covered with vermin. He told me an interesting story of an old Cambodian women telling the guards to leave them alone. She mixed up a potion and applied it to his entire body and the bugs and fleas and lice just fell off and he stayed clean for a week. He said he'd never forget it. As the told me the story tears streamed down his face.

The Vietnamese torture camps were very physically violent, like in our own they beat you and tie you up in uncomfortable positions for days and sometimes you die. However, the Vietnamese never used sex as torture. They might pluck out your fingernails, but in a US torture camp we will sodomize you with battery acid dipped objects.

You will read reports of the successful interdiction of terrorist attacks, the number of other terrorists captured or killed, the explosives and weapons seized, the plots averted and the lives saved -thanks to waterborading. Lefties will deny any of this could be true, skeptics will consider and weigh the evidence carefully and others will challenge you to refute the conclusion torture works.

I think skeptics will deny it being true. I mean, the entire war is pure propaganda at this point:
Al-Qaeda Chief In Iraq: Captured, Killed, Never Actually Existed, Now Captured Again
Cheney is a liar, torturer and murderer; he has no credit with me. He can say whatever he wants, I'd sooner see him dead.

Waterboarding was a training technique that was so benign that it only caused about 15 seconds of discomfort and recovery time was usually less than a minute. The longest average recovery time was two minutes. If you believe that is torture, especially when I offered you examples of real torture then you are not living in the relm of reality.
If you believe that we will torture our men then you do not understand how difficult it is for people to attain such a high degree of training. They are simply too valuable to torture. Our enemies do that.

You're not listening: they beat people to death and sodomize people with objects dipped in battery acid. They don't just lightly waterboard people, you've bought into another story about hanging chads. Understand I've already excessively (like 5 times now) cited the Taguba Report which does explain that used dogs to attack people, they sodomized people, refused medical treatment, and even beat people to death with objects. For the last damn time waterboarding isn't the issue!
http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf...e-statment.pdf
Seriously, this is a story of a 16 year old girl being sexually abused in the prison. It also talks about the fear of being murdered by the chain of command for revealing this information. It includes story of cold blooded murder. In one case to intimidate an Iraqi General, they picked up his son and beat him, then smeared him in mud and drove him around in the cold before bringing him to see his father (the kid wasnt a prisoner).

It isn't what you think it is deadeye, it isn't waterboarding, its real intense physical and sexual torture on a mass scale.

[Deadeye]

You told a sad story, sure, but you're ignoring certain facts, mainly that torture has very little to do with pain.

If you speak with John McCain he will tell you that torture is very much indeed about pain. Many of the men whom I have met who were tortured in the Hanoi Hilton will tell you that the twisting of the ropes and the beatings were very painful, and frightening.

Of course torturing the brain is torture as well. As you will learn as you read about it, the men who broke under the waterboarding broke only when they were told they were going to do it all over again.

I am a former Naval Aviator who flew attack fighters during the VN War. I can guarentee you that I know much more about torture than you do. What are you a student? A professor? What experience do you have with torture?

You've watched a person being put under the waterboard? So? He didn't like it did he. And he recovered in how many minutes/seconds? LIke about 15 seconds right? And how many minutes was the water being poured? About 15 seconds, right? It's not a bowl of cherries being put on the water board, but we laughted about it later on. We where however told not to discuss it, as the school and the proceedures used were classified Top Secret, as I recall. So we didn't talk about it with anyone, even our wives.

As we were driving away from the school where we were put under coerced interrogation, we all said. "Man, that was a bitch....lets go someplace and get drunk".

No one ever mentioned it again, we couldn't. Now of course, the president and his pals have spilled the beans to the entire World. So much for the keeping of secrets.

Now we cannot use coerced interrogation whatsoever, so the secrets that the enemy has, that might cause us to thwart and attack have been taken from us and the terrorist can sit in his cell, read, get his teeth fixed, take a language class and maybe work on his tan.

If we are struck again, and thousands or millions lose their lives who's responsibility will it be? You'll say Bush, of course; but it'll be Obama's as it will be he, who removed our ability to give coerced interrogations.

[Deadeye]

sodomize people with objects dipped in battery acid. They don't just lightly waterboard people, you've bought into another story about hanging chads. Understand I've already excessively (like 5 times now) cited the Taguba Report which does explain that used dogs to attack people, they sodomized people, refused medical treatment, and even beat people to death with objects. For the last damn time waterboarding isn't the issue!
http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf...e-statment.pdf
Seriously, this is a story of a 16 year old girl being sexually abused in the prison. It also talks about the fear of being murdered by the chain of command for revealing this information. It includes story of cold blooded murder. In one case to intimidate an Iraqi General, they picked up his son and beat him, then smeared him in mud and drove him around in the cold before bringing him to see his father (the kid wasnt a prisoner).

It isn't what you think it is deadeye, it isn't waterboarding, its real intense physical and sexual torture on a mass scale.

I don't believe that the torture that you mention was done by our services. Barking dogs were used, and I understand they considered using a spider.

The weirdo female GI at Abu Graib was wrong and operating against what she should have done. She's also in jail.

If you really believe that our forces actually perform real torture as I think you alluded to, then I'm not going to change your mind. I don't believe it. The Congress was told everything that was being done to prisoners. They didn't say a word and they were briefed as far back as 2002.

[Disinformant]

You are not required to believe anything, its a fact. I cited the report. READ THE REPORT. The report has it all; this is the report that coincided with the pictures that got people in trouble. Our troops are doing this, I'm sorry, I know how disturbing and wrong that is, I agree, but its true and it would be unamerican to ignore it.

[Cruella]

Deadeye, this thread isn't about me or my experiences - nor, I respectfully point out, is it about you and yours - the point is, the facts do not fit your anecdotes. What you think is not torture is deemed torture not only by the general public, but by government officials, humanitarian agencies et al.

Put aside your emotive pleas, and debate facts. The facts are that this is deemed torture, you may know people who have been treated worse, but that does not diminish, nor excuse, in any way what has happened here. It's all wrong, and man's basic inhumanity to man is something we should be aiming to stop, not attempting to justify on the grounds that torture used to be proper torture "back in the day".

[Disinformant]

Cruella, I'm sorry, but seriously water-boarding has NOTHING to do with the discussions; thats like talking about hanging chads when Bush stole the election. Its watered down. Real torture is happened, not fake weird technically legal/illegal not that bad torture, but murder, sodomy, etc.

[Cruella]

Yeah, I know, Dis. I'm not the one you should be taking issue with, however.

[rmnunez]

Dis, please tell us where we'd find White House memoranda on torture by sodomizing with utensils dipped in battery acid.

[Charlatan]

If someone poses a threat in a war, they may be shot. What threat did the mother and baby pose? They were posing no threat whatsoever, but, they were in a war zone. If they were shelled to death via bombing planes this would not be so important or noticed, so, why is it noticed now? The fact that someone blindly shells civilians is not under scrutiny? What is the difference between killing someone with aerial bombings and shooting the mother and child? The difference is that a soldier killed them and is accountable, not the president. What about the scores killed in Gaza? How did they affect the war? Why were they killed? Do soldiers like to kill civilians? Do everyday people like to kill others? These soldiers are everyday people faced with scrutinizing the area and killing bad people that have means to kill them too. What if the mother had a gun, would she then be fair game? If a mother dies with a child it must be a mistake, as they would not waste their time on such a thing. Were they lined up? No, it happened in the heat of the moment, if a mother runs through a war zone carrying a baby it is easily mistaken for a weapon, so, the soldier had to think quickly. What if all the suicide bombers were women running around with bombs hidden in baby clothes? Then they would all be shot most definately, so, it is up to the soldier what they want to do in any situation. Easy mistake.

[Disinformant]

Dis, please tell us where we'd find White House memoranda on torture by sodomizing with utensils dipped in battery acid.

Is that a joke? All you do/did see from the White House was efforts to legitimize and insight as much violence and torture as they legally could. You see an Attorney General and the Sec of Def using everyone at their disposal to overwrite all conventions on torture, to throw wrenches into every single law protecting these people. Now, why would you make the leap of faith that Bush and Co. didn't also do everything they could to reduce the amount of regulation and enforcement of the rules? And additionally, why would you assume they didn't also give a quiet nod to the heads of these camps? Why assume they didn't purposefully hire people to run these camps who they knew were sickos? Why assume they didn't know about torture practices being carried out identically in a dozen places in Iraq and several dozen around the world?
I'm embarrassed by the torture, too; but it isn't going to help America to ignore the facts.