Exactly what argument do you think I'm advancing?

Tipping someone, on an inclined board, placing a cloth over their face and pouring a little water on it is not, and I repeat, not torture.

Hmmm. You strap someone down and do things to them that are designed to break their will and make them talk... thats not torture?

"I was just following orders". Where have we heard that before?

When you were asked why you voted DarthObama the 666. it was an echo.

Detainees, of course, have no such recourse.
.

lol, did you mean 3 top terrorist leaders with vital information on coming attacks of mass destruction?

Why are our opinions of lesser value than those of people, like you, who have never experienced these things? Why do you discount us out of hand, Alex?

Why do you not give us the respect we deserve?

I can take a stab at it:
1) You are an anonymous internet poster and consequently none of us have any idea if you are even remotely what you claim to be
2) The people who we do know who are educated on the matter don't agree with you (see for instance Ogrisseg's testimony in this post)
3) You are clearly heavily partisan and thus its not like you can be considered an impartial observer in the matter

I think that covers it.

My original point was that Alex wants to prosecute interrogators who performed waterboarding, despite the fact that the practice was cleared for use.

"I was just following orders". Where have we heard that before?

By the way, much of Dr Ogrisseg's testimony is a crock of shit. Many things he says about SERE training certainly wasn't true when I attended the Navy's SERE training.

So you're claiming that the man who ran Psychological Services for the Air Force SERE doesn't know what he's talking about?

Of course, my opinions, which are counter to yours, just prove that I'm brain-damaged. No surprise, since I was "tortured," eh?

No, you weren't tortured. That's the point. The context of SERE training is vastly different from what happens to detainees, as the testimony noted above indicates.

Do you discount the possibility he had an agenda that he wanted to promote with his testimony?

His agenda was to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God." I imagine that this was in the context of his oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

And finally...safe word? You've just proved that you post nonsense. You have no idea what you're talking about here, Alex. Since you have no context, you have no clue whether what you post is true or not.

That was found in the testimony of the officers in charge of running the Air Force SERE. Do you mean to imply that you are more familiar with SERE methods than the officers in charge SERE training? Why won't you give them any respect?

Tipping someone, on an inclined board, placing a cloth over their face and pouring a little water on it is not, and I repeat, not torture.

The purpose of waterboarding is to induce the sensation of drowning. The prisoner must believe he is about to die. Reducing this to 'pouring a little water on a cloth' is typical of torture apologists whose moral cowardice will not allow them to acknowledge the true brutality of what they espouse. Cheney is a particularly sickening example of this kind of personality. Tough in the abstract far from the action, but when his country called on him to serve on the battlefield he hid.

My original point was that Alex wants to prosecute interrogators who performed waterboarding, despite the fact that the practice was cleared for use. He wants to say "they knew, or should have known, that the practice was torture." I contend that it's not as clear-cut as he wants to pretend it to be. Also, he discounts the input of some people who have actual experience in this vein (the ones who disagree with him — but the ones who agree with him are golden).

That's all I'm trying to say. He's trying to characterize the dispute as settled, that there are no valid arguments against his position.

That's what I'm talking about.

So having to watch someone drown your child would be an acceptable enhanced interrogation technique? Done carefully it would leave no marks on prisoner or child. This definition leaves lots of room for fun with drugs, stress techniques that rip tendons and ligaments, techniques that cause internal injuries without leaving a mark. Would causing pulmonary edema count?

This is a technique invented by the Spanish Inquisition. Men were men back then. They thought it was torture. Interesting that regimes we would not want to identify with, keep coming back to this as an interrogation tool.

Boyd- As a fellow vet (Corpsman) I respect your opinion. However, I disagree. I think context matters a lot. There are any number of physical acts which are acceptable, even pleasurable, under some circumstances and not in others. The question then is whether it rises to the level of torture. Prior to our recent usage of this technique, we had prosecuted as a war crime Japanese for waterboarding. We had put in jail a law enforcement officer who waterboarded a prisoner. There seemed to be a pretty solid consensus that this was torture. Then we used it and there seems to be a post hoc attempt at justification by those who implemented the technique. Maybe there were people like you who thought all along it was not torture. Maybe you would have opposed prosecuting those who used it on our soldiers. We will never know, as your voice was not heard before. Having read over the Geneva Conventions, some of the Convention Against Torture and relevant sections of FM 3-24, I find it hard to see waterboarding as acceptable. As a practical matter, I also find it awful strategy and hurts in our larger efforts against the jihadists of the world. (Read Cavguy's recent post in SWJ).

Steve

Bad editor.

Doesn't even leave a mark. Real torture leaves marks.

What size to the marks have to be?

As an analogy, if someone pushes my head down in water for 30 seconds at a time, with a .5 second warning before doing so to let me get my breath, then it's probably tolerable.

If someone pushes my head down in water till I am just about ready to black out, or just about ready to suck water into my lungs, that's an order of magnitude more distressing.

Yet, superficially, both can be described in similar words.