That doesn’t meant we couldn’t have learned that information from other methods that do not put somebodys life at risk.

I have to agree with both sides… To a degree..

If we learned information that saved the lives of my comrades, then that makes me feel good.

We certainly tortured people. It was the method that the government chose to use. It seriously damaged our image and credibility to the civilized world. That is fact. If you don’t care about that you are an idiot.

Stop the partisan bullshit. Sometimes hard decisions need to be made. Sometimes you will get a lot of shit for making those decisions. It’s called life.

Both sides in this case raise valid points. But in the end, those were the decisions that were made. Did they advance us as a society? Did they safeguard anybody? Nobody posting here has that information. Did these actions hurt us? Yes. Does the bad outweigh the good? None of you have any clue.

Fuck it I have beer now. You all crazies!!

What if the tired old cliche of the “ticking time bomb” doesn’t get defused because the only man who knew where it was went into cardiac arrest the fortieth time someone smashed his body into a wall, or inhaled too much water and died during waterboarding. Since we’re prancing around in the land of “things that might happen” anway, I’d like to hear your opinion on that particular topic.

And yes, there are medical staff present for many of these interrogations. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for example, is a forty-five year old man. Go pluck the average forty-five year old guy off of the street. Starve him. Keep him awake for days or weeks at a time. Slam him into walls and floors. Partially drown him on a daily basis. Strip him naked, hose him down, and leave him in a freezing room for a month or two. Lock him in a coffin-sized box full of maggots and bugs for days on end. And then tell me that having a team of EMTs standing by is a guarantee that he won’t keel over and die.

Even if you don’t give a shit about his well being, even if you think that torturing prisoners is just the most fun thing in the world. . . forget all of that. We are endangering valuable military assets by subjecting them to an interrogation program that is well known to provide inaccurate and unreliable information. What is the fucking sense in that?

I agree that some of these guys do have incredibly valuable tactical information. But you wouldn’t try to open a locked safe by dropping it off of the side of a cliff. You’d either pick the lock or carefully cut the safe open. Why? To protect the integrity of whatever valuables were worth locking up in the first place. The human mind is no different in that respect.

2. It’s a training exercise to RESIST torture. If it weren’t torture, it would be a piss poor training exercise. Also take into account that anyone who does it under military supervision has put forward to do it willingly and under controlled conditions. To force someone to do half of the things we put our military up to would very much fall under the category of cruel and unusual (such as the willing intake of mustard gas during boot camp), and I am uncertain where you actually hoped to go with this argument. These aren’t soldiers we are doing it to. But hey, it’s a training exercise, maybe they will be when we’re done with them and send them back home…

I fail to see how you can have the level of cognitive dissonance to get a hardon for torturing someone, and follow up with how it isn’t actually torture.

Torture my ass, for some people it’s a training exercise!

And in truth we have no idea if we will even receive useful information out of them by torturing them, what we ARE certain of is that it causes lasting psychological impact on people. We also know THERE IS A GODDAMNED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ABOUT IT!

Even under controlled conditions, it has had severe psychological impact on people. Even if the people know they are safe, and are being asked constantly if they are okay, it still screws them up something harsh.

Some video:
Hitchens being waterboarded, and afterthoughts.
Not water boarding, but another form of enhanced interrogation. If waterboarding is getting water splashed on your face, this is what you would call a shower.

So stop arguing about whether it is torture or not. It’s torture. All you are arguing is whether it is excused.

Also, the less you trust your government, the happier our founding fathers would be.

Those select few, and I cannot stress “select” enough, that were waterboarded have no qualms in killing you, you’re family, and having some “fun” with your daughter/mother/sister before putting a bullet in thier brains. I have no sympathy for them at all, and wish them nothing but pain and suffering for the innocent people they have already brutally murdured and the naive women and children they have tricked into becoming human bombs.

I’m comfortable with the fact that I can’t know every single thing our government does. Do you want the NSA to release a damn newsletter or something? “Hey, we found out that terrorists or about to attack such and such area on this date”. Wow, great info, good thing we just announced to the world that we know about a terrorist plot that will just have its time frame adjusted. Secrets need to be kept, and I can’t understand why people like you have such little faith in the most generous, rightous, caring country in the world. Of course we’re not going to release all the “juicy” information that has been obtained through the extremly mild coercion technics, that would be ludacris.

The fact of the matter is, we waterboard mass murdurers, whoop-deedo. I find it very insulting to myself and our nation that you would compare Stalin’s tactics to any of that of our leaders. You may not like Bush, you may not like Rumsfeld, but you have to acknowledge the fact that they were doing what they thought was best for this country, and that thier intentions were honorable. When it comes down to it, there is only one real job for the President and his cabinet… to do what is best for America… not Europe, not Asia, not the Middle East… America.

Exactly how many times should I let someone lie to my face before I stop believing them? What’s your policy on that, Evan?

Let’s glance over the fact that you don’t have a problem with torturing people, even “evil doers” if it gets results. Sad, but whatever. The real point is that it doesn’t yield results. Torture has never been effective as an interrogation technique. You torture someone to break them, and you break them to extract a confession. It results in unreliable, faulty information because once a human being reaches that breaking point, they will say damn near anything to make the torture stop.

As for the “releasing a manual” thing, give me a fucking break. Do you really think there is a single terrorist out there that doesn’t know the United States waterboarded its prisoners? Really? Are you that naive? Even if it had never been published in any newspaper, any magazine, never been whispered on television, it would still have reached the ears of our enemies. But again, that argument is worthless since torture still doesn’t work.

So, like I said. Come on back to me when you’ve been waterboarded a dozen or so times, and I’d love to hear your opinion on whether it’s torture and whether it’s effective. Until then, maybe you should spend less time rhetorically defending Stalin and Pol Pot, and more time learning the difference between talking points and an actual, cohesive argument.

How about you get off your high horse and try to comprehend the good that has been done from information learned by this so-called “torturing” done by the US.

Cheney is speaking up because he knows that releasing a manual to terrorists (oh wait, I forgot you can’t say the “T” word anymore in the Obama administration, it’s “human disaster” or some BS) that explains how we get information out of them and how they can prepare for it.

To hell with what the rest of the world thinks of us because we can get relaible information out of murdurers and rapists. If it contributes to the well-being of my nation and its people, I’m all for it.