If watter boarding is torture and explicitly forbidden under the Geneva Convention....?

Question

Who should pay for this crime? Nancy Pelosi and others knew that this was practiced and asked if it was a strong enough method of interigation. So why is everyone putting the blame on Bush and not holding others accountable for their knowledge and approval of this method? Is it just double standard or can we all agree that this is just good interigation practice and it saves lives? There is no pain involved and the subject is never in any danger of death or serious harm. Opinions?

Who is protected under the Geneva Convention. I've read it and studied it. Have you? Terrorist are not part of a uniformed militia that openly carries arms.

For those that say Bush is in charge and therefor the only one to commit a crime, I say this. If you are aware of crime and do nothing to report it or stop it, you are a willing participant and an accessory. But none of them are guilty of any crimes because no crime was committed. It's not torture.

Answer 1

C'mon you guys....do a little research. In the first place the Geneva Convention does not mention waterboarding. In the second place, water boarding does not even meet the definitive qualifications for "torture" . How many of you people even know the definition of torture? WHAT IS TORTURE??
In the third place.... there are several intelligence committees in the Senate and the House. These committees are briefed on all these things. And yes Virginia, Nancy Pelosi was present at one of the meetings where water boarding was discussed AND approved as an intelligence gathering technique. She took over Rep Harmon's spot who was the sr member of the House Foreign Intelligence Committee untill your beloved democrats took over.

This was all happening back in 2002. The repubs were in the majority in 2002 but Pelosi was part of the committee and she did agree with the concept of water boarding.

Gawd....I don't know why I bother. You people have got to read past the political b....s.....t.

Answer 2

While I like where you are going with this, it is our constitution's provisions against cruel and unusual punishment that apply here. The Geneva Convention is like a contractual agreement and specifies that the parties involved must wear uniforms among other requirements. Therefore this wouldn't apply to terrorists.

Edit: You other answerers need to look it up. I heard the same thing as the asker, although I'll admit it was from Rush Limbaugh. Nanci Pelosi knew about water-boarding and yet asked if it was a strong enough method of interrogation.

Answer 3

I've went through worse than water boarding during S.E.R.E. Training. One of the big reasons that we did not achieve our objective during Vietnam (notice I did not say we lost, I will never say we lost) was that the average American could not get to the same humanitarian level as our enemy. We set the standard and kept the war as humanitarian as you can possibly keep a war. We couldn't cut little kids arms off. We could not strap a grenade on a young child and send them into a group of people. We fed the villages instead of taking all their food. We could not do the things that our enemy was doing to torture other people. Still yet, we defeated the VC and NVA in every military encounter that we faced them. I'm sure there were isolated instances, but as a people, we can hold our head up high.

I don't know if water boarding is considered torture or not, but all my friends who were POW's, without exception, DO and are totally against it. I guess I'd have to be in the midst of the situation to make that decision. But the matter of the Col. holding the gun to the guys head to make him talk, I can relate to him and I hope he gets off. No one knows what they would do until faced with the situation. A man does different things and thinks differently in the middle of battle. I think it all falls back to the person's character, the moral and civil values that he was raised with. Additionally, our country has prosecuted leaders of other countries for war crimes in previous wars for water boarding. Double standard, sounds like one to me.

Now, saying all that. I firmly believe that America is threatened now more than anytime in our history. There are these muslems out there that want to kill us just because we are Americans. They will stop at nothing until they do. The idiot Limbaugh's on the right and the idiot Pelosi's on the left need to shut the hell up and start trying to unite this country instead of pulling it apart. We are defeating ourselves by being partisan.

One more thing Rick. I normally vote republican and I'm not too fond of Al Gore either. But Ray Charles can see that Flordia was rigged. Gore should have won that first election.

Edit: Clearly most the answers on this question are partisan right wingers. And thanks for the thumbs down! All I can say is, that if there is no honor after victory, then it is no victory at all. If you are going to use tactics like this to save lives, then just go ahead and nuke the SOB's and get it over with. Same difference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 4

Big if. I do not deal in hypotheticals. It is not torture and not forbidden by the Geneva Convention.

The Geneva Convention only applies to people who fight under a nation and terrorists do not.

You expose the fraud of democrats to gain power.

Answer 5

You read in an article that Nancy Pelosi was informed in a closed meeting about the interrogation techniques they used, which she approved of them. The problem is that they probably didn't inform her that they were using water boarding techniques so it seems to me that the Bush administration is left holding the bag completely alone.

Torture should not be allowed. No question. If we torture, that makes us no better than the terrorists.

Answer 6

The Geneva convention bans simulated executions. Waterboarding is a simulated execution by drowning so it's prohibitted. That would make the US guilty of war crimes.

Answer 7

If water boarding is truly torture, why do we subject our own soldiers/marines to it in training? We don't subject them to limb/eye/tongue removal, shoving bamboo spikes under their fingernails, branding, electrocution, etc....because THOSE methods ARE torture. (Somebody please tell the terrorists this!)

While they use the aforementioned methods of torture, we have limited our interrogation to loud music, sleep deprivation, and occasionally water boarding. How unfair of us!

They use genuine torture in order to find out how to hit us harder and waste more lives. We use simulations as a way to convince them to tell us how they plan to hit us in order to protect lives. Not for one moment do I believe that we "are becoming as evil as they are" by employing these methods...especially given our purpose.

Answer 8

Bush is responsible for the country, isn't he? And he is the Commander in Chief, right?

And at the time, wasn't Nancy Pelosi a member of the minority party?

If all that is true, then why would Nancy Pelosi's reactions even be considered when trying to place blame?

Maybe Rush Limbaugh hadn't thought that out when he said it on his show, huh? I mean, that might convince the Republican base, but I don't know about the rest.

Answer 9

Pelosi, Harmon & Rockefeller knew about it and asked if water boarding was enough to get the job done. I think whatever methods work, use them & water boarding works.
The Geneva Convention rules do not apply to terrorist, so when fighting terror, we should not have to abide by these rules either.

Answer 10

I think we need to withdraw from the Geneva Convention entirely and draw up a new plan that clearly states: terrorists have no rights