Friday, April 24, 2009

what does waterboarding look like?

Two videos of people agreeing to be waterboarded. Very interesting to see the confidence going in and the results. And I have to believe the feelings are different when there are no cameras around, you don't have code words, and you have no reason to think they will stop.

Vanity Fair Waterboarding Video

Huffington Post Waterboarding Video


I think if George W. Bush had said "In cases where we believe national security is at stake, we practice interrogation techniques that are classified as torture" I think most people would probably admit, "yeah, waterboarding is torture." But because we've declared the US doesn't torture, now we're trying to fit the facts to our ideals.

And this isn't a Republican-Democrat partisan issue. This is George W. Bush administration issue.

Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.


"There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that as torture otherwise we wouldn't have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans...I would also hope that he would not want to be associated with a technique which was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in one of the great eras of genocide in history and is being used on Burmese monks as we speak. America is a better nation than that." - John McCain, November 2007

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