So is water boarding illegal?

[Winterblues]

Bush* gave an interview where he said it was perfectly legal..I guess since he nor anyone else has not been prosecuted it must be.. Maybe someone should suggest that it not be...:shrug: I think most every other country in the world considers it a crime, not America however..

[walldude]

1. It will be if a Democrat does it.... n/t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. My hubby says green berets get waterboarded as part of their training

I believe him beause he has no reason to lie to me but that seems incredible.

Is it true?

[mcollins]

6. My brother is in the Army,

and he said it was a part of SEAR training or something. Survival Escape and Resistance I think it what it is called.

Supposedly it trains you to handle situations that you may face when captured by teaching you how to deal with it. He said that a form of water boarding was used, however, I haven't read anything about it anywhere else.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. That's pretty much hubby's contention

The reason the CIA etc use the techniques they do, i.e. col and sleep deprivation is because they use green beret training to learn what does and doesn't break someone while teaching people how not to break.

And then he said he often thought about becoming a green beret when he was in but marriage proved far more challenging.

So I hit him.

[mcollins]

16. Well, I assume you still talk to your husband,

My brother and I hardly talk anymore. After his last trip to Iraq he pretty much said he didn't want anything to do with me.

[EFerrari]

10. Over a hundred detainees have died in our custody after

being "harshly interrogated". I guess they didn't pass the course!

[Supersedeas]

15. how many military trainees have failed the course by death?? As a Vet, I'd be curious to know.

[EFerrari]

17. Yup. Rumsfeld was one of the first ones to try to pass off torture

as something we do to our troops all the time, no big deal. That was on par with Inhofe calling Abu Graib "frat pranks".


/oops

[The Straight Story]

3. Only if you do it, the govt and companies can do as they please - and people wonder why

I am all for individuals owning guns. If not the little guy then the only people with them will be the government and the rich who will hire security people w/guns.

Who ya gonna trust, joe citizen or corp hacks/bush?

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Bushcheney ordered their legal minion to declare it so.

Thus providing the ass-covering for their crimes. Then again everything the Germans did in WWII was also 'legal' by similar logic.

[Soral]

5. There was no legal definition of torture that named waterboarding in 2001-2003 timeframe.

Now, yes. Then, no, and the Constitution prohibits punishing people for actions that weren't illegal before new laws were passed. I fully agree that waterboarding is torture, and I certainly didn't agree with its use back then, but it wasn't expressly illegal at the time.

I believe the law passed in 2005 gives more guidelines on the whole thing. Obviously, there doesn't have to be a law that states "hooking up a guy's nuts to a car battery," but the legislation that existed on the books at the time, both Federal and International, were so vague that waterboarding could have gone either way.

[Winterblues]

7. Didn't we prosecute Japanese Soldiers for that very thing?

I seem to recall that some Japanese soldiers were prosecuted by the USA for the war crime of torture for using water boarding and I believe at least one was put to death..

[JonLP24]

13. Even Reagan's DOJ prosecuted a Sheriff for waterboarding

Reagan's DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff for Waterboarding Prisoners

George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case -- which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later -- was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.

The failure to cite the earlier waterboarding case and a half-dozen other precedents that dealt with torture is reportedly one of the critical findings of a Justice Department watchdog report that legal sources say faults former Bush administration lawyers -- Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury -- for violating "professional standards."

Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury also shocked many who have read their memos in the last week by their use of clinical and legalistic jargon that sometimes took on an otherworldly or Orwellian quality. Bybee's August 1, 2002, legal memo -- drafted by Yoo -- argued that waterboarding could not be torture because it does not "inflict physical pain."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/138600/reagan%27s_doj_prosecuted_texas_sheriff_for_waterboarding_prisoners/

[KansDem]

12. "Now, yes. Then, no"

"Now," we are winners; "then," they were losers.

Big difference...

[Solly Mack]

21. Waterboarding was recognized as torture and prosecuted by the US

long before 2005.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

"As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas."

The "water-cure" is just another name for waterboarding. It's been called the "water-torture" as well.

The only people confused about waterboarding were the people wanting to get away with their crimes...and they were lying about their confusion.

[ixion]

22. It's an old tactic, and has long been considered torture....

So I will respectfully disagree with your premise.

[Deep13]

8. If it hurts, it's torture.

If it's torture, it's a federal crime.

[slackmaster]

11. Legal only if it's done among consenting adults

:hi:

[EFerrari]

14. Waterboarding is torture, similated drowning and is illegal.

It's a violation of the War Crimes Act and a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Yes, I don't expect him to favpce the music

But it is.

[Solly Mack]

19. Didn't Reagan's DOJ prosecute a sheriff for waterboarding prisoners?

And that wasn't the first time the US prosecuted people for waterboarding either.

[ixion]

20. Yes, it is.

The lawyers drafted a brief making a case for it's legality, and then used that as a justification. This is called echo-chamber-voodoo.

At the end-of-the-day, though, it is still very much a torture technique.