Since when is waterboarding torture? What else is torture?

Question

Honestly, since when is waterboarding tourture? I always considered things like, cutting all the flesh off someones arm with a knife, or taking a belt sander to their unclothed chest or breaking each of their fingures with a hammer one by one or even putting their head in a vice and turning it till their eye popped out ( all horrible things that should never be done to a person ) torture. Since when is, simulating drowning torture? It seems to me that is just a way to cause panic and enough discomfort that over a very long time it would make them talk, not actual torture. What's your oppinion on the subject?

Answer 1

I first learned about what waterboarding is during a college French class during the fall semester in conjunction with a discussion of the French in the Algerian war for Independence. Waterboarding has been used for thousands of years, and was criticized because it elicited false confessions during the Spanish Inquisition.

It is an "enhanced interrogation technique" by which confessions can be elicited in less than five minutes. It does not require a lot of water -- I read of several instances during the Vietnam war where a canteen full of water was used to elicit information. No, there is no water that enters the lungs, but the subject reacts as though he were drowning. I will not describe how it is done because I do not want you to try it at home.

American military personnel are trained in resisting certain types of physical torture, but they really cannot be trained to resist waterboarding because there is no real way to resist it. It is an effective way of securing information, but it also has demoralizing effects on the victim of waterboarding.

Answer 2

And the Constitution takes another hit. I look at it like this, If I can't do it to a perp on the street, it IS torture. And lets just say I don't have a waterboard in the back of my cruiser. (unless I just arrested a surfer, which is rare in my state.)

Answer 3

If you don't consider this torture, are you willing to participate in a demonstration of waterboarding?

If we have questions for you that you can't possibly answer (you don't know anything since you weren't there) do you think you would let yourself drown or make up an answer to stop the feeling of being drowned alive?

Answer 4

Erm...so you don't think that immobilizing a person on their back and pouring water over their face and into their breathing passages - thereby making them experience the process of drowning and letting them think that they are about to die - not a form of torture?

You really think it's just about 'discomfort'? Are you up for a demonstration to see just how uncomfortable it can be?

Answer 5

As far as I am concerned, any time you use any type of physical force to obtain information from a subject refusing to talk is torture. Any other definition is just a debate concerning the degrees of torture.

Answer 6

"[Waterboarding is] a way to cause panic and enough discomfort that over a very long time it would make them talk" meaning physical pain that leads to coercion meaning torture.

Answer 7

Hmm, hard question. It is illegal to do that do dogs, why should it be legal to do it to people???????? Maybe one of your consevative buddies can shove some bamboo splinters under your finger nail just for fun the next time you are sitting around your chevy pick-up downing those bud-lites.

Answer 8

u might wanna check out the dictionary buddy.....torture is any kind of harm to living being, such as psychological, physical, and any other kind of thing that can be "scared."

Answer 9

I think you should have a session of water boarding and after I would like to see if you have the same opinion on torture.
Good luck!!!

Answer 10

Water boarding results in water being poured into the lungs. How do you talk with water in your lungs?