White House defends use of waterboarding

[IDemo]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday defended the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, saying it is legal — not torture as critics argue — and has saved American lives.

President Bush could authorize waterboarding for future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, a spokesman said.

A day earlier, the Bush administration acknowledged publicly for the first time that the tactic was used by U.S. government questioners on three terror suspects. Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.

Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23030663/

---

Incorrect info in the article. Waterboarding does not "create the sensation of drowning." It is drowning, period.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Whoever the next president is should order Bush to be waterboarded to get him to confess his

illegal acts.

[ladywnch]

21. great idea! and if his lawyers object, we'll pull out the reams of paper

where jr declares it's not torture or illegal!

[yojon]

29. Would probably save lives

if junior would pay attention to National Intelligence Estimates that say that Osama was determined to strike in the US.... Seems like that keeps getting lost in the discussion.

[Webster Green]

2. "Saved American lives"

Bullshit!

Another outright lie by the torture-chimp.

[ixion]

3. President Bush could authorize waterboarding for future terrorism suspects if

he needs some new snuff porn.

These people are loathsome, and they've turned this nation into a 3rd world rogue state.

[tekisui]

4. Waterboarding is drowning someone to the point of death.

Then resuscitating and doing it again.

It is torture. Good they've admitted it. Impeach, now.

[notadmblnd]

5. So they go from denial, to admission to defending...

well if it is not torture and it is not illegal.. I'm sure the pretzledent would offer to be the recipient and demonstrate to us how it is not torture?

[truthisfreedom]

6. "White House says having our own troops waterboarded is O.K.."

That's what they're really saying, ladies and gents. They're saying that waterboarding is okay when used against our servicemen and women. Because when you waterboard others, you're opening up the door to being waterboarded yourself.

[sellitman]

8. If Pelosi won't impeach now she should be waterboarded.

Her and any Dem who wont impeach these monsters.

[Stuart G]

10. They are saying only in certain circumstanc es.

So......it ain't going to happen to our troops, because our troops will never be in those circumstances............


...........and this is what happens to a line of thinking that is fundamentally flawed.. Fundamentally flawed thought dances around and round like so many angels on a pin. Arguing forever this finite point vs that point, forever saying that a lie is not a lie, and that waterboarding is not torture, or that black is white, or that that it is ok to invade another country, and kill, if you kill for the right reason to take away a dictator, no matter what............................on and on and on and on..........


..........sad isn't it???????????????????????????.........................this is our country's leaders talking this way............

[tabasco]

16. Exactly.

Not only does this place our troops at greater risk, the US no longer has the moral authority to condemn torture of our own soldiers.

[Win]

7. What ever happened to

Sodium Pentothal or truth serum?

They sing like a bird and then take a nap.

Oh. Waterboarding gives the ghouls a reason to live.

[Ian David]

9. So, Bush would waterboard someone to prevent a terror attack. But ...

... would Bush have sex with another man to prevent a terror attack?

Other than Arthur Ashe, the Ambassador to Poland, I mean.

[Stuart G]

11. You know what???

What we are talking about makes sense ...For we talk to each other, and that makes sense..we know truth,,,,,,,,but...these
are people ...Bush and company, who we would never talk to in any kind of conversation. They just do not make any sense at all, almost never................end of rant...:grr: :grr: :grr:

[Barrett808]

12. "An explicit admission of criminal activity"

Human Rights Watch, which has been calling on the government to outlaw waterboarding as a form of illegal torture, called Hayden's testimony "an explicit admission of criminal activity."

Couldn't be clearer than that.

[Solly Mack]

13. War.Crime.Nation

and as bad as that is, that they will get away with their crimes is worse. Because America doesn't get to claim it's better when Bush is out of office. America doesn't get to claim it has regained its "moral authority" or that its "image" has improved. Not without lying anway...

Because America won't be a better nation after Bush is out of office if the Bush administration isn't prosecuted for war crimes...it will be the war crime nation that allowed its war criminals to go free...that's all America will be...America, where war criminals walk free.

[Supersedeas]

30. the true legacy of this Bush Administration

[tomhayes]

14. I think Bill Clinton was right on this

If you *have* to torture someone to prevent an attack, do it, and THEN live with the legal consequences. If you can prove what you did absolutely prevented an attack (prove in a court of law) then you should be convicted of the crime, and either serve time in jail, or be pardoned by the legal system. And if you get nothing then you take your chances with the legal system. Can't have it both ways.

But it *has* to be considered a crime whenever you break the law.

From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14907031/page/2/

MR. RUSSERT: Would you outlaw waterboarding and sleep deprivation, loud music, all those kinds of tactics?

MR. CLINTON: Well, I — here’s what I would do. I would figure out what the, what the generally accepted definitions of the Geneva Convention are, and I would honor them. I would also talk to people who do this kind of work about what is generally most effective, and they will — they’re almost always not advocate of torture, and I wouldn’t do anything that would put our own people at risk.

Now, the thing that drives — that, that gives the president’s position a little edge is that every one of us can imagine the following scenario: We get lucky, we get the number three guy in al-Qaeda, and we know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don’t we have the right and the responsibility to beat it out of him? But keep in mind, in 99 percent of the interrogations, you don’t know those things.

Now, it happens like even in the military regulations, in a case like that, they do have the power to use extreme force because there is an imminent threat to the United States, and then to live with the consequences. The president — they could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon or could guarantee the submission of that sort of thing ex post facto to the intelligence court, just like we do now with wire taps.

So I, I don’t think that hard case justifies the sweeping authority for waterboarding and all the other stuff that, that was sought in this legislation. And I think, you know, if that circumstance comes up — we all know what we’d do to keep our country from going through another 9/11 if we could. But to — but to claim in advance the right to do this whenever someone takes a notion to engage in conduct that plainly violates the Geneva Convention, that, I think, is a mistake.

[YankmeCrankme]

27. He couldn't be more wrong.

Here's the deal. All these rationales for the use of torture rely on one premise. You know there is a bomb and that the guy you have knows about the bomb. The problem is if you actually know about the bomb you know where it is, otherwise you only, kinda, sorta, think that the probability is high that there is a bomb. You aren't really sure, you just have information that there MIGHT be a bomb.

To know for sure means that you know where it is already. Then there isn't a need for torture.

To think it's okay to torture someone when you have information, whether reliable or not reliable, means you can basically torture anyone who you think might give you information that you want, that you're predisposed beforehand to expect. Another thing, if the person doesn't give you your predisposed information you would conclude they are lying and continue to torture them, correct?

Where Bill Clinton is wrong is to presuppose that torture would only be used for that one situation. That is either naive or disingenuous. Condoning torture under any circumstance is both immoral and an evil act.

To add to his tortured (pun intended) logic, he says that if you decide to torture and hold the person(s) accountable the President can always pardon them after the fact. That amounts to no accountability.

[Laughing Mirror]

15. "Waterboarding" sounds like some fun sporting activity

That's why they call it that now. To make it sound inoffensive. They used to call it water torture, but they had to change the name. Because water torture sounds like torture. Waterboarding sounds like sport.

Waterboarding anyone?

[alfredo]

17. That's enough to send them to the Hague.

[mrfocus]

18. Question that is guaranteed to dumbfound conservatives

"If waterboarding (or any other kind of torture) is OK for terrorist suspects for the stated reason that torture will save American lives, then shouldn't we also waterboard kidnapping suspects?"

I mean, it WOULD save American lives. Come to think of it, the same is true for murder suspects, DUI suspects, etc. etc.

Let's re-open police torture chambers (just like the ones used until about 200 years ago)....because if it's good enough for terror suspects, it sure is good enough for ANY suspect!

[Xipe Totec]

19. Don't give them any ideas n/t

[politicaholic]

20. It used to be an executable offense...is he going to legalize mass murder now?

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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

[Supersedeas]

22. Frat Boy Fratto with more ambiguities and generalities to throw at the compliant media

[sattahipdeep]

23. "the gold standard of double standards."

Waterboarding has a long history in US policies despite the fact that
Judge Michael Mukasey wishes to equivocate. In Vietnam, the US forces
used waterboarding then called water cure by binding Viet Cong captives
upside down in barrels of water. They also used the torture technique against
the Filipinos. A US soldier boasted in a letter made public that he had used
the water cure on 160 people and only 26 had survived.


http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=42348§ionid=3510303

[daleo]

24. How long until torture is used on U.S. domestic criminal subjects?

If you can justify it against foreigners, how long until it will be justified against Americans? After all, "if it will save American lives", why not torture serial murder suspects?

Then any murder suspects...
then bank robbers...
then impaired drivers...
then sinners in general, and we are back to the Spanish Inquisition.

[sattahipdeep]

26. Transcript

Mr. Wright is quoted in today’s Washington Post as disagreeing with your
characterization. According to Wright, “we weren’t talking about swimming,
we were talking about his military training and I asked him if waterboarding
was part of that training. The context was how awful it would be if it were
done to him.” According to Mr. Wright, you raised your experience as a
water-safety instructor after this exchange.

http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48742615_senator-feinstein-urges-dni-mcconnell-provide-tran

[Oak2004]

28. Do I detect a whiff of lying to Congress?

The more Bush Atty Generals change, the more the charges against them remain the same.

[struggle4progress]

25. US Code Title 18 Part I Chapter 113C - Torture

Sec. 2340. Definitions

As used in this chapter--

(1) ``torture'' means an act committed by a person acting under
the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or
mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to
lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical
control;

(2) ``severe mental pain or suffering'' means the prolonged
mental harm caused by or resulting from--
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of
severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened
administration or application, of mind-altering substances or
other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or
the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be
subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the
administration or application of mind-altering substances or
other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or
personality; and

(3) ``United States'' means the several States of the United
States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths,
territories, and possessions of the United States.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+18USC2340

Sec. 2340A. Torture

(a) Offense.--Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts
to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct
prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned
for any term of years or for life.

(b) Jurisdiction.--There is jurisdiction over the activity
prohibited in subsection (a) if--
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States,
irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

(c) Conspiracy.--A person who conspires to commit an offense under
this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the
penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the
commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+18USC2340A

Sec. 2340B. Exclusive remedies

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed as precluding the
application of State or local laws on the same subject, nor shall
anything in this chapter be construed as creating any substantive or
procedural right enforceable by law by any party in any civil
proceeding.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+18USC2340B