Did waterboarding work?

[mgc1961]

The successful raid on Osama bin Laden's safe house in Pakistan has reinvigorated debate over the role that "enhanced interrogation techniques" have played in fighting al-Qaida. No one is switching sides, which has turned the argument into a theological one between two sets of true believers. Each views the other as heretics.

Get over it. The whole of the debate is pointless posturing. There is no way to prove or disprove the real worth of America's experiment with waterboarding and coercive techniques. More important, enhanced interrogation isn't coming back.

The legal framework underlying waterboarding collapsed during President George W. Bush's tenure. The White House Office of Legal Counsel in 2004 withdrew the memoranda that authorized waterboarding. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, sponsored by former POW and torture victim Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., barred "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of any detainee in military custody. There may be an argument that waterboarding isn't torture, but there's no argument that it's not cruel, inhuman and degrading.

That hasn't stopped the pro-waterboarding faction from pushing for a return to techniques that were ended by Bush, not President Obama. The next time former Vice President Dick Cheney says that we should bring back waterboarding (as he did in a recent interview with Fox TV's Chris Wallace), he's mostly feuding with decisions made by his old boss, not the current commander in chief.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/01/115085/did-waterboarding-work.html#ixzz1O7phllCL


Following the mutiny of part of Ferdinand Magellan's crew in 1520, Hernando Morales was tortured in order to elicit a confession. One common method of torture employed at the time which may have been used on Morales was the Wooden Horse.

"... the victim was secured with metal bars to hollowed-out bench, his feet higher than his head. "As he is lying in this posture," runs an early account, "his arms, thighs, and shins are tied round with small cords, or strings, which being drawn with screws at proper distances from each other, cut into his very bones, so as to no longer be discerned. Besides this, the torturer throws over his mouth and nostrils a thin cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through them, and in the meanwhile a small stream of water like a thread, not drop by drop, falls from on high upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable condition, and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his throat so that there is no possibility of breathing, his mouth being stopped with water, and his nostrils with cloth, so that the poor wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing their last. When this cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is, that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels through this mouth."

Bergreen Laurence, Over the Edge of the World, pg. 150, 2003

We dropped the ropes and metal bars, a sure sign of progress. :sarcasm:

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. It doesn't fucking MATTER!! It's illegal and immoral. Nuff said.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. who cares?

It was wrong when the Japanese did it. It was wrong when Bush did it. It was wrong when Obama did it.

[yellowcanine]

3. Depends what one means by "work". Did it "break" people? Yes.

Did it produce "useful" information? Probably not - at least the evidence is inconclusive at best.

Did it probably damage the U.S. fight against terrorism for years to come? Probably.

So I guess it depends on what the goal was.

[saras]

4. Yes. Not to get Bin Laden, but that wasn't its purpose

It intimidated justice workers all over the world, not just in the Middle East.

It split the Democrats between those whose principles reject torture and those who don't.

It helped send the message that the United States is above the law, and willing to be utterly evil on the flimsiest excuse.

It helped send the message that we simply don't care about the innocent. They have no value in this system.

It gave the people in charge personal, up-close knowledge that innocent human beings were being destroyed, their minds and souls permanently scarred, some fatally. They enjoy this spectacle vastly, both up-close and in the abstract.

So, yes. Waterboarding worked great.