| yanamaster said: wow, no wonder most of the world really feels disgusted with the US. Waterboarding not torture? What tree did you fall off from squirrel?? And the fact that some of you are willing to accept these kind of actions just to be "safe" is really disturbing. But i guess this conformism is to be expected when you're a citizen of "the greates country in the world" right? Pathetic. |
First off, I'm not an American ...
Now, I've had the sensation of drowning several times in my life because I spent a lot of time as the lake as a child, wasn't a particularly great swimmer and did some very stupid things. Its not really painful, its not really tramatic, and there are no long term negative side effects. Part of the reason why the special ops are waterboarded is that the experience (on the whole) isn't that bad, but people who have not experienced the sensation of drowning before are (likely) going to panic; and after you have had it done to you a couple of times you're not going to panic, and you just have to survive a sensation somewhat worse than the worst cold you've had for a little while. You can't say the same thing about actions like breaking someone's tumb with a hammer or pulling out their finger nails (which are clearly torture), so I think it falls short of classical definitions of torture.
Do I think it is something they should be doing? No, the fact that they're trying to "Force" information out of a prisoner against their will puts their actions into a dangerous grey area ...
The other actions that I have mentioned which others have equated to torture I'm fully willing to give the millitary full rights to perform these actions.
