What is "Waterboarding?"

And Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, and countless other totalitarian dictatorships that maintain their power through fear, oppression, and terror.

We're in good company!

I never said America was the same as those despotic regimes, just that our ideological positions are starting to have more in common with them than the democracies we used to revere.

What surprises me is why you would stay in a country that embraces water boarding.

"America, love it or leave it?" It is the moral and ethical responsibility of the loyal opposition to seek reforms rather than asylum UB. The German people that fled Nazi Germany rather than stand and be counted among those who opposed the Holocaust were, in some sense, culpable for the crimes of the Nazi regime. The torture of prisoners - both innocent and guilty - is reprehensible. I will not flee the United States and, in doing so, become complicit in these crimes against humanity.

Torture is wrong. It is the ethical responsibility of every American to oppose it and fight against it.

Sleep deprivation and loud music walk a fine line. I'd rather we didn't do it simply because I don't think it would be appropriate treatment of civilian prisoners and I don't believe we should be treating our POWs any differently.

That said, I think it's a great deal more defensible practise than water-boarding.

The primary problem as I see it is that these techniques are being used on suspects not convicted terrorists. Oftentimes we've had them turned over by a foreign power in exchange for money, meaning there's almost no guarantee they actually did something or even intended to harm the US. By using these techniques on innocents we are making enemies in the world. Individuals who previously had no problems with the USA might feel differently after being wrongly imprisoned in a 50 degree cell for days without sleep - naked and under constant sensory assault.

Basically, make torture a very very rare occurrence that is saved for the extreme cases of the "bomb in NYC set to go off in 3 hours" variety.

The only problem with this compromise is that this means the only time that torture is "ok" is the time that it's most defeatable. If I've planed the proverbial nuke in NYC and you're torturing me to get the location I can simply lie to you for three hours. Once it goes off I no longer have anything of value to give you.

How do you know when the victim has given you the right information and the wrong information? Do you just keep torturing after each answer, assuming it's wrong? If so - what incentive does he have to tell you the truth? The torture won't stop. If you stop after the first answer to verify and then resume torture when it's wrong, he only has to hold out for a short while.

Essentially, the only time that torture might be morally justifiable it's technically infeasible.

Sadly, that really is the metric many use to determine if Americans support torture.

I'm not sure that our torture of people will make any difference with respect to the torture of our own troops. Those that torture aren't likely to care all that much about the rule of law and reciprocation.

What it does, however, is eliminate the image of the US as the "good guy." Of course it's well known that the US government as a whole is economically cut-throat when it comes to protecting the interests of US corporations, but on issues like human rights and the rule of law we used to get a pretty good score.

There are a thousand arguments against torture: the slippery slope, the risk to our own troops, the loss of credibility on the international stage, the loss the moral high ground and so much more.

how is it different than any other form of suffocation?

First, the presence of water. Human beings have a fairly instinctual understanding that they're not supposed to be under water, and certainly not supposed to be trapped there. So, for the first part, water boarding has a lot to do with exploiting fears that mere suffocation doesn't tap into.

Second, the inclination of the board distorts equilibrium and forces water into the nostrils and throat. This signals the brain that the victim is taking on water and drowning, further amplifying these fears.

Third, the repeated exposure to this stimuli in combination with the almost complete inability to move renders the victim both powerless and terrified. Water floods into the nose and throat, air is cut off, and the victim is unable to keep from thrashing against the board.

Water-boarding is of particular significance because it's a practise that is almost always dismissed as laughable. Described as Ugly Bastard put it (having a cloth put over their face and water poured over the head) sounds annoying more than anything else. Described as I have above, the treatment is shown as it is -- a psychological torture.

Torture is wrong - and while there are many who disagree with that statement, the intent of this article is not to influence them. This article is intended to communicate that the practises we use today are torture. Water-boarding has been used as a torture technique by so many regimes that such an article ought not be necessary, but thanks to the political spin of so many on the right it has become necessary.

If by "detect" you mean torture them to confession so they could be burned.

Alternatively they could be thrown from the Bridge of Death.

Sigh.... check Scenes 24 and 35 Dubliner.

That's ok... the third comment stood up.

Cruel and unusual punishment RobieB - I know there's a strong sense of vengeance involved with punishing some of our more reviled criminal elements, but they get the same rights we do.

Even so - you might be interested in Foucault's "Discipline and Punish."

It's not light reading, but you'll learn a lot about how and why we punish the way we do.

Bob --

There are several problems with your stance - though I respect it as your opinion. First, you are using the language of war. Words like "war" and "enemy" draw a picture that is far more simplistic than the tactical landscape the US faces. Our enemies do not wear uniforms, march in straight lines, or identify themselves.

While we may disparage them for this, we ought also remember that this makes it very likely that we will capture many individuals who are innocent of wrong-doing and are not of their number.

We are not giving these people trials Bob. We're sending captives, not convicted terrorists, to be waterboarded, shackled into stress positions, and subjected to all manner of other pseudo-torture.

Even as an ardent opponent of practises like waterboarding, I can't feel all that upset if we're inflicting it on individuals tried and convicted of terrorism against the United States in order to keep more Americans safe -- but we're not doing that. We're torturing suspects, not convicts.