What do US soldiers think of waterboarding terrorists?

taltamir

Join Date 01/2006

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What do US soldiers think of waterboarding terrorists?

I wonder what soldiers who were waterboarded to be "toughened up" think about this whole "waterboarding is torture and should be illegal to use on terrorists" crap.

To quote wikipedia:

All special operations units in all branches of the U.S. military and the CIA's Special Activities Division ^[14] employ the use of a form of waterboarding as part of survival school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training, to psychologically prepare soldiers for the possibility of being captured by enemy forces.^[15]

To further quote it:

Waterboarding is a form of torture which consists of immobilizing the victim on his or her back with the head inclined downwards, and then pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages, causing the captive to believe he or she is dying.^[1] Forced suffocation and water inhalation cause the subject to experience the sensation of drowning.^[2] Waterboarding is considered a form of torture by legal experts,^[3]^[4] politicians, war veterans,^[5]^[6] medical experts in the treatment of torture victims,^[7]^[8] intelligence officials,^[9] military judges^[10] and human rights organizations.^[11]^[12]

Wonder why there is no "other side" arguments? why it is presented as fact? well if you look to edit the page you see this hidden warning after the word torture:

I really really want to hear from soldiers, especially ones who were waterboarded as part of their training, what do they think about the outcry against waterboarding terrorists (nobody is complaining about US soldiers being waterboarded though)

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So far the only backing you have made for any of your ludicrous claims is repeating ad nasium the saying "they are still people with inalienable human rights". You have to do better than that.

Funny - that is the first paragraph of the german constitution: Human dignity is inviolable. You don't want to accept how fundamentally important it is. It is not just some whiney do good we're-all-human-beings-and-love-each-other crap, it is THE principle. It might not be written like that in the US constitution - but human dignity is the fundamental principle there as well.

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As a former active duty U. S. Marine, I will state that all SpecOps people go through several levels of training. A 5 day course in escape and evasion, a 2 week course that includes capture and interogation, and a 30 day course. the last two include waterboarding as part of the training. It continues to this day, my question is that if this is so bad that we can't use it on our enemies why are we still using it on our own troops?

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You are not using it on your own troops. Using implies that it is commonplace to punish, question and treat soldiers with that technique(s) in the US military. You yourself used the term "training" which is different from "using it on your own troops". Training means that you want to prepare for the case that someone might get treated that way when captured - help to cope and to know what it might be like in order to be able to endure the mental stress. That is the reason they trained you, right?

If it would be used on captured US soldiers, would you call it torture then? Or say that "yeah no we use that ourself all the time, it is normal for us".

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You are not using it on your own troops.

It is the exact use on our troops and our enemies. we are given information to withhold and in almost every case we give it up. You see it was invented to train our troops and then it was tried on our enemies. waterboarding has been used on our operators since the 70's during President Carters administration. We did not start using it on our enemies until the late 80's because it was effective and caused no harm when done correctly. In most cases it takes 46 seconds to get the person to tell all. Waterboarding was a training aid first and an interrogation tool second. Another tool was to put people in a coffin sized box and let them think that creepy crawlies were in there with them. this works well also but is more dangerous. the mind makes it much worse than it actually is. We used to have a simple policy on torture. if we used it we killed the perosn after. If the person is still alive when we are done than they were never tortured.

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It generally makes me shudder how willing many people are to do violence unto others. There is no part of human culture where mankind has been so inventive as in coming up with methods to torture and/or execute others. Some methods are absolutely barbaric - I once read this article about ancient execution methods from persia, china and rome/greece - you wouldn't believe how cruel some were. It is a mark of civility and progress for me to surpass that barbaric stage and uphold human rights as one of the most important principles. Those cultures that are using torture as a normal everyday tool are archaic, backwards and uncivilized in my opinion. Age does not correlate to quality in this regard.

The fact that you don't have that "policy" anymore shows that the US surpassed barbary. It is not a sign of weakness or softness to not use torture.

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I think you miss the point. Waterboarding is not violent, or painful. it is startiling, shocking but not painful or dangerous, which is why it is used on our troops.

It is a mark of civility and progress for me to surpass that barbaric stage and uphold human rights as one of the most important principles.

interesting that you say this. The human rights of people are being violated by terrorists daily and the worse we have done is sprinkle water in thier face and you cry for them. They kill people that have nothing to do with them and that seems okay to you. They are not enlightened, they crave the barbaric as a tool to shock and control their enemies. It is okay for them to machinegun a kindergarden full of kids. what about their human rights? What did the children killed intentionally by these people do to them to cause thier murder?

The fact that you don't have that "policy" anymore shows that the US surpassed barbary. It is not a sign of weakness or softness to not use torture.

Not true, we have never had a policy of torture. The fact that we have only waterboarded 3 terrorists in 30 years proves that. This is because the legal opinions at the time it was used said that waterboarding was not torture. The current administration has reversed that ruling calling it torture yet it is still used on our troops. Does that sound right to you? It is a political ploy nothing more.

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interesting that you say this. The human rights of people are being violated by terrorists daily and the worse we have done is sprinkle water in thier face and you cry for them.

Why do you interpret what I said as codding terrorists? I tried to explain why it is dangerous to trivialize the issue in this thread. And deflecting the argument by saying "the others do it, why don't you whine about them" is just that, deflection. The countries that do use "real" torture are barbaric, backwards, uncivilized and generally places that I would never go to or trade with, countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq under Saddam, almost completely south America, some middle america, many places in Africa and Asia - essentially the rest of the world it seems lol except Europe and the US and Canada.

You insist that waterboarding is not torture because it does not hurt you - but that on the other hand everybody gave up everything he knew in under a minute (I assume that was from your training). Now why would a person do that if it was so harmless? Maybe because it was because your brain didn't believe that it was so harmless.. it thought it was drowning and that you were about to die. Making someone believe that you're about to die isn't some party trick, at least not where I come from. It's the same as pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger, only that you knew that there were no bullets in it and the other person didn't. Harmless, nobody got hurt

I'm gone for the next few days so I can't reply if there is one from you. Hope you all had a good thanksgiving.

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essentially the rest of the world it seems lol except Europe and the US and Canada.

Known fact: the UK, France, Spain, and in two known cases even Germany does it. The Germans use sound waves that can explode a kidney if done incorrectly or correctly depending on who is using it. The French just beat the hell out of you, the UK uses chemicals, drugs that make you vomit, cause your blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels. All except for France leave no phisical marks, no proof of torture.

You are correct it is all in the mind, all interrogation is in the mind. Even the conversations with the terrorists are mental probes into the terrorist. Just talking to the terrorists will get most of what we want but it can take as much as 11 years to get them to talk. With the people that were waterboarded they had information that was time sensitive. Once Mohamed found out that we were not going to beat the information out of him he laughed at us because he saw that as weakness. Five minutes later we had actionable intelligence on current plots to attack the UK, the US, and two other countries.

It is all a mind game, just like the 30 hour week. A form of interrogaton that makes the person think a week has gone by in 30 hours. His bomb plot was a success so now he brags about the details and we grab the bad guys before they can do harm.

Before an interrogation method is used the person is evaluated for the best trick. it is used and we get the information. The 30 hour week is the thing we use that is closest to torture. It can cause a mental breakdown when the terrorists finds out that he was tricked.

Since you don't wish to trade or go to or deal with countries that are in your words barbaric, then don't buy or use any product that is petroleum based unless you know that the oil came from Canada or America, if not then you are directly supporting torture.

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