| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"z" |
| Date: |
12 Nov 2007 11:45:55 AM |
| Object: |
Re: Not Torture After All |
On Nov 9, 7:02 am, "Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
Is "waterboarding" torture? A vexing debate has raged over the question f=
or
several years now, but here's an Associated
Press report from Monday that ought to settle the question once and for a=
ll:
Anti-war protesters are hoping a demonstration of waterboarding will
convince a Senate committee to reject
Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey (myoo-KAY'-zee).
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/09/nance/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----
Waterboarding is not simulated drowning -- it is drowning
A former instructor at the school designed to teach U.S. soldiers how
to resist torture speaks out against the "terrifying, painful"
technique.
By Malcolm W. Nance
Nov. 09, 2007 | Chairman Conyers and members of the committee.
My name is Malcolm Wrightson Nance. I am a former member of the U.S.
military intelligence community, a retired U.S. Navy Senior Chief
Petty Officer. I have served honorably for 20 years.
While serving my nation, I had the honor to be accepted for duty as an
instructor at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape
(SERE) school in North Island Naval Air Station, California. I served
in that capacity as an instructor and Master Training Specialist in
the Wartime Prisoner-of-War, Peacetime Hostile Government Detainee and
Terrorist Hostage survival programs.
At SERE, one of my most serious responsibilities was to employ,
supervise or witness dramatic and highly kinetic coercive
interrogation methods, through hands-on, live demonstrations in a
simulated captive environment which inoculated our student to the
experience of high intensity stress and duress.
Some of these coercive physical techniques have been identified in the
media as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. The most severe of those
employed by SERE was waterboarding.
Within the four SERE schools and Joint Personnel Recovery community,
the waterboard was rightly used as a demonstration tool that revealed
to our students the techniques of brutal authoritarian enemies.
SERE trained tens of thousands of service members of its historical
use by the Nazis, the Japanese, North Korea, Iraq, the Soviet Union,
the Khmer Rouge and the North Vietnamese.
SERE emphasized that enemies of democracy and rule of law often ignore
human rights, defy the Geneva Convention and have subjected our men
and women to grievous physical and psychological harm. We stress that
enduring these calumnies will allow our soldiers to return home with
honor.
The SERE community was designed over 50 years ago to show that, as a
torture instrument, waterboarding is a terrifying, painful and
humiliating tool that leaves no physical scars and which can be
repeatedly used as an intimidation tool.
Waterboarding has the ability to make the subject answer any question
with the truth, a half-truth or outright lie in order to stop the
procedure. Subjects usually resort to all three, often in rapid
sequence. Most media representations or recreations of the
waterboarding are inaccurate, amateurish and dangerous improvisations,
which do not capture the true intensity of the act. Contrary to
popular opinion, it is not a simulation of drowning -- it is
drowning.
In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't
know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat. It
then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of
respiratory degradation.
It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers
frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully
conscious of what was happening -- I was being tortured.
Proponents claim that American waterboarding is acceptable because it
is done rarely, professionally and only on truly deserving terrorists
like 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Media reporting revealed
that tough interrogations were designed to show we had "taken the
gloves off."
It also may have led directly to prisoner abuse and murder in both
Iraq and Afghanistan.
The debate surrounding waterboarding has been lessened to a question
of he-said, she-said politics. But I believe that, as some view it as
now acceptable, it is symptomatic of a greater problem.
We must ask ourselves, has America unwittingly relinquished its place
as the guardian of human rights and the beacon of justice? Do we now
agree that our unique form of justice, based on the concepts of
fairness, honor and the unwavering conviction that America is better
than its enemies, should no longer govern our intelligence agencies?
This has now been clearly called into question.
On the morning of September 11, at the green field next to a burning
Pentagon, I was a witness to one of the greatest displays of heroism
in our history. American men and women, both military and civilian,
repeatedly and selflessly risked their lives to save those around
them. At the same time, hundreds of American citizens gave their lives
to save thousands in both Washington DC and New York City. It was a
painful day for all of us.
But, does the ultimate goal of protecting America require us to adopt
policies that shift our mindset from righteousness and self-defense to
covert cruelty?
Does protecting America "at all costs" mean sacrificing the
Constitution, our laws and the Bill of Rights in order to save it? I
do not believe that.
The attacks of September 11 were horrific, but they did not give us
the right to destroy our moral fabric as a nation or to reverse a
course that for two hundred years led the world towards democracy,
prosperity and guaranteed the rights of billions to live in peace.
We must return to using our moral compass in the fight against al-
Qaida. Had we done so initially we would have had greater success to
stanch out terrorist activity and perhaps would have captured Osama
bin Laden long ago. Shocking the world by bragging about how
professional our brutality was was counter-productive to the fight.
There are ways to get the information we need. Perhaps less-kinetic
interrogation and indoctrination techniques could have brought more al-
Qaida members and active supporters to our side. That edge may be lost
forever.
More importantly, our citizens once believed in the justness of our
cause. Now, we are divided. Many have abandoned their belief in the
fight because they question the commitment to our own core values.
Allied countries, critical to the war against al-Qaida, may not supply
us with the assistance we need to bring terrorists to justice. I
believe that we must reject the use of the waterboard for prisoners
and captives and cleanse this stain from our national honor.
-- By Malcolm W. Nance
Copyright =A92007 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from
any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.
SALON=AE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a
trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.
.
|
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| User: "Patrick Gallagher" |
|
| Title: Re: Not Torture After All |
12 Nov 2007 06:23:04 AM |
|
|
wrote:
On Nov 9, 7:02 am, "Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
Is "waterboarding" torture? A vexing debate has raged over the question for
several years now, but here's an Associated Press report from Monday that
ought to settle the question once and for all:
Anti-war protesters are hoping a demonstration of waterboarding will
convince a Senate committee to reject Attorney General-nominee
Michael Mukasey (myoo-KAY'-zee).
I find your logic (tongue in cheek or not) entirely unconvincing: Just because
people are willing to subject themselves to torture does not automatically
disqualify said procedure from being torture. One needs look no further than
this brave man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
I think we can agree that lighting a prisoner on fire qualifies as torture, no
matter how many monks practice self-immolation.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/09/nance/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waterboarding is not simulated drowning -- it is drowning
A former instructor at the school designed to teach U.S. soldiers how
to resist torture speaks out against the "terrifying, painful"
technique.
By Malcolm W. Nance
Nov. 09, 2007 | Chairman Conyers and members of the committee.
My name is Malcolm Wrightson Nance. I am a former member of the U.S.
military intelligence community, a retired U.S. Navy Senior Chief
Petty Officer. I have served honorably for 20 years.
I cannot help but wonder if he is one those fake military men liberals
so often trot out for an extra dose of gravitas....
.
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| User: "Ubiquitous" |
|
| Title: Re: Not Torture After All |
13 Nov 2007 11:50:07 AM |
|
|
wrote:
I find your logic (tongue in cheek or not) entirely unconvincing: Just
because people are willing to subject themselves to torture does not
automatically disqualify said procedure from being torture. One needs look
no further than this brave man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
I think we can agree that lighting a prisoner on fire qualifies as torture,
no matter how many monks practice self-immolation.
The Associated Press reports on another bad analogy, offered by a leading
Senate Democrat:
[Attorney General Michael] Mukasey, his opponents argued,
refused to say whether waterboarding is torture and put
the onus on Congress to pass a law against the practice.
"This is like saying when somebody murders somebody with
a a baseball bat and you say, 'We had a law against murder
but we never mentioned baseball bats,' " said Judiciary
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. "Murder is
murder. Torture is torture."
Leahy is begging the question. The issue with waterboarding has nothing to do
with the implements used; it is whether the procedure itself fits the
definition of torture. Leahy's "argument" is like saying that it is wrong to
kill an enemy combatant on the battlefield because "murder is murder."
.
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| User: "Ubiquitous" |
|
| Title: Re: Not Torture After All |
13 Nov 2007 03:56:45 AM |
|
|
wrote:
gzuckier@snail-mail.net wrote:
On Nov 9, 7:02 am, "Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
Is "waterboarding" torture? A vexing debate has raged over the question
for several years now, but here's an Associated Press report from Monday
that ought to settle the question once and for all:
Anti-war protesters are hoping a demonstration of waterboarding will
convince a Senate committee to reject Attorney General-nominee
Michael Mukasey (myoo-KAY'-zee).
I find your logic (tongue in cheek or not) entirely unconvincing: Just
because people are willing to subject themselves to torture does not
automatically disqualify said procedure from being torture. One needs look
no further than this brave man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
I think we can agree that lighting a prisoner on fire qualifies as torture,
no matter how many monks practice self-immolation.
Actually, it would be murder, not torture. It would also be murder if one
protester deliberately set another ablaze, even if the immolatee consented.
For the analogy to hold, then, anyone who believes waterboarding is torture
should be calling for the prosecution of the protesters who "tortured" this
guy.
.
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| User: "z" |
|
| Title: Re: Not Torture After All |
13 Nov 2007 09:33:57 AM |
|
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On Nov 12, 7:23 am, "Patrick Gallagher" <rosendodea...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/09/nance/
A former instructor at the school designed to teach U.S. soldiers how
to resist torture speaks out against the "terrifying, painful"
technique.
I cannot help but wonder if he is one those fake military men liberals
so often trot out for an extra dose of gravitas....
Yeah, and the liberals infiltrate them as instructors and Master
Training Specialists in the Wartime Prisoner-of-War, Peacetime Hostile
Government Detainee, and Terrorist Hostage survival programs at SERE,
in order to destroy the US.
.
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