"Allen" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Opus--Mark H. Bowen" wrote:

As a guy who got waterboarded at SERE let me assure you that beheading
(which I admit to not having endured) is likely worse.

Are we assuming that everyone who is waterboarded survives?

If you were to know that you would not survive the torture, would you
still
choose waterboarding?

Op

Well, I guess you're asking if I knew I was going to die which I prefer?

I'd have to say the beheading certainly.

Yep, that is what I was askin'. My point was that I'd rather die quickly
than suffer for an extended period before death.

While I have never experienced waterboarding--the description of what takes
place is enough to let me know that I don't want to experience waterboarding
either.

I'm sure that there are people that have died while/after waterboarding.

There is a record of such.

It's stressful and damn unpleasant and if there were pre-existing
medical condition it could well trigger a fatal event. It was used at
SERE to make certain hard cases (me being not bright enough to realize I
was about to get labeled such) that they enemy WILL get the info from
you and waterboarding was a pretty safe way to show you the mildest
thing they will do. It was a good lesson/ I learned it well.

Not trying to be a smartass, but would you have considered waterboarding to
be a mild form of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"/torture, if you were
exposed to it over and over for many days or weeks?

100% of people who are beheaded die. (OK, I'll admit I didn't research
that but I'll take a shot at it being true

Seems a reasonable assumption.

The point, I guess is that we're not going in and killing/maiming people
that are being questioned. If someone is reluctant and those in charge
believe there is time critical intelligence to be gained I'd say break
out the plank.

Would you condone attaching electrical devises to one's genitals, or gouging
someone's eyes out as well? (These may be poor examples, but I have never
contemplated the various forms of "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques"/torture, and I am sure that you are much better versed in
techniques that would not necessarily cause observable physical damage or
harm, having gone thru SERE training and whatnot) If so, my point is: Aren't
you distinguishing between forms of torture? I that the U.S. should never
condone torture and certainly not codify the forms of torture, as to those
that are grudingly acceptable and those that might be more questionable.
Jeff's slippery slope, ya know.

I am not so much worried about our enemies treatment--per se--but the
message that officially condoned torture sends to the world about us as a
people. I know that others nations practice torture as a matter of course,
but I'd like to think that we, as a nation, are better than that. I also
know that, during times of war, horrible things happen to individuals and
groups of individuals, which will alter their moral compasses. These
situations should be rare, I would hope, and certainly not encouraged by our
political and military leaders.

It is my opinion, that if we allow "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques"/torture to become common place in our arsenal of intelligence
gathering, we have abandoned our constitutional beliefs and are no better
than those we call our enemies.

And what about those so-called enemy combatants that are handed over to us
by questionable allies. As we have seen, in Afghanistan, tribalism creates
strange bed-fellows. It is know that members of the Norther Alliance handed
over territorial rivals to us as enemy combatants, who were merely rivals to
a particular warlord and not an actual enemy combatant/Taliban, as we would
have difined them. If we put these people through "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques"/torture techniques and they were actually friendly to us, what
harm have we done to our strategic objectives. It is my contention that we
would be creating an enemy out of a friend in such cases.

No matter how the words above appear to you, I am not criticizing you, or
trying to provoke you. I just want to understand your position, and make
certain that my position is understood.

Regards,

Op