Waterboarding. Even the casual news observer knows that this has been an issue of great discussion lately. I figured that I should take some time to find out more about the debate, as it were. What is waterboarding exactly? Is it torture? Is it necessary? Is there any tangible national security benefit? Is is wrong? These are a few of the questions I set out to answer for myself.
To start with, a FOX News reporter did an investigation into what waterboarding is. This is not a pro/con report. It is a video demonstration of how the technique is done.
Just as I decided that this was an issue that I should spend some time on, I read a post on Evangelical Outpost entitled, “Our Tortured Silence: The Shameful Response of Christians to Waterboarding.”
As you can guess, Joe Carter does not support waterboarding.
Much to my disappointment, however, Carter does not present a well-reasoned argument. He merely insults the writer of a pro-waterboarding article and claims that torture is un-Biblical.
Inclined to be opposed to torture and to take at face value the oft repeated liberal view that no credible intelligence ever comes from torture, I was surprised when I read the article that Carter was opposed to and found that the US government has obtained credible information using the waterboarding technique.
If I was to take the premise that no credible intelligence comes from torture as true, along with the premise that credible intelligence was obtained using waterboarding, wouldn’t I have to conclude that waterboarding is not torture?
It looks like a form of torture to me. I mean, what else would you call it?
The only option left is to declare one of my premises to be false. If it is false that torture does not produce credible intelligence information, and in fact it does, that sure does undermine the most reasonable argument against the use of torture.
Just a side note here, that a civilized people should not use torture is not a reasonable argument. It is an emotional argument. If we based our laws on whether or not a practice makes some people feel icky when presented with a detailed description, we would have to end legalized abortion, now wouldn’t we?
So where does that leave waterboarding?
The answer is, I don’t really know. I think it is disturbing, but that in and of itself is not a reason that it should not be done.
I also think that if when used it has led to the arrest of terrorists and/or thwarted terrorist plots (ie plans to kill people. Kill people. Remember we are talking about trying to stop people from being killed here. This isn’t just an exercise in sadism.), it might be necessary. I say this in the context of the Deroy Murdock article.
So what do you think? I really would like to hear some discussion on this.
One caveat, I will not be responding to any commentors that engage in name-calling. I hate to sound so matronly, but, well, that’s what I am. It is possible to have a discussion or debate without resorting to the base tactic of insulting your opponent. Think of it an an intellectual exercise. Witty sarcasm, when used sparingly, will be tolerated. Probably even laughed at.
(Note: Joe Carter followed up with another post, which I blogged about here.)
November 6th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Why don’t you let someone waterboard you Charity and then do another post on it? Every time I think you’ve reached a new low as far as defending the indefensible, you tak eit further. Who would Jesus torture?
Since when is ‘no intelligence comes from torture’ a ‘liberal’ view? Were all those US Soldiers in WWII who refused to torture Nazis liberals, too?
“The only option left is to declare one of my premises to be false.”
That pretty much applies to just about everything you’ve written about since returning to blogging.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Just a side note here, that a civilized people should not use torture is not a reasonable argument.
Apparently your definition of ‘civilized’ is as sick and as twisted as your interpretation of Christianity.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Thanks for the intelligent contribution to the discussion, JD.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
“Apparently your definition of ‘civilized’ is as sick and as twisted as your interpretation of Christianity.”
Do try to make sense next time you comment.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Charity, could you point out any exhibition of ‘intelligence’ in your post above? It’s so sick and twisted it made me livid.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Try reading it again. I do not think you even read it. You immediately assumed I was supporting torture and then you went all wonky. I was trying to have a discussion about it. I said that I am “inclined to oppose torture” and “I think it is disturbing.” I also said that being disturbed by something is not a rational reason to oppose it. (Actually I said reasonable, but I meant rational.) There are many things that I find disturbing, but I still would not outlaw.
November 7th, 2007 at 2:26 am
Waterboarding is torture, and torture is against U.S. and International Law. I don’t think that it gets any simplier than that IMO. The current Regime in Washington has tried to “redefine” torture, but none-the-less waterboarding is torture. Whether we can get reliable intelligence from it or not (I personally would probably tell anyone anything that they wanted to know…whether it was true or not…under real pain or fear of death, but that’s just me) is not the issue. We lose the moral “high ground” when we engage in things like torture. Torture is what the “bad guys” do…we’re supposed to be the good guys, remember? I think torture is wrong for all these reasons, and I always get a kick out of so-called conservatives that try to defend whatever the Bush Regime does (like torture)…they feel the need to split legal and moral hairs very finely, which I find amusing. Life isn’t like the TV show “24″…we can stop ticking time bombs without having to torture anyone I would hope.
I’m not sure how abortion comes into play on this issue. Views on abortion tend to skew along relgious lines…if you believe (which is the key word) that life begins at conception, then abortion is the taking of a human life (or the potential of a real, viable human life anyway). Since I don’t think that medical science has proved (or ever will prove) that life begings at conception…I don’t have much of a problem with abortion. Especially since I’ll never need to get one (abortion really is a women’s issue IMO), and since I feel that a decision as important as whether or not to get an abortion should be bewteen a woman and her doctor. Doctors that have a real conscious would never allow another human being to be tortured in front of them….that’s the whole “first do not harm thing”…
November 7th, 2007 at 9:06 am
For me, there is no question that torture is not a nice thing, or a thing we want to think of the “good guys” doing, but this issue is really bigger than that.
Imagine you are in charge of the government and you have detained a high-level official in a terrorist network, who absolutely will not talk, despite having information on current plots to kill hundreds or thousands of Americans. Can you really substitute your judgment of what is or is not civilized, or is it your duty to protect the American citizens?
This is a serious question. I am not defending torture, I am asking questions. (Sorry if you can’t handle being asked to defend your positions, JD.)
I think saying that torture is not something civilized people do, etc., is sort of a cop out. I think it also ignores what is at stake here.
Or does it? Can we use moral arguments to make policy? Whose moral code do we use for making law?
That was the purpose of throwing in abortion. Not to say that it is the same or in the same class, but to ask that if we want to use moral arguments against things, then whose morals do we use, and where do we draw the line?
November 7th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Oh and, welcome Mister Guy, and thanks for joining in the comments. I’m glad you enjoyed the show.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Sorry if you can’t handle being asked to defend your positions, JD.
What are you talking about? It’s hard to defend anything to you, because you don’t do the ‘logic’ thing very well.
Imagine you are in charge of the government and you have detained a high-level official in a terrorist network, who absolutely will not talk, despite having information on current plots to kill hundreds or thousands of Americans. Can you really substitute your judgment of what is or is not civilized, or is it your duty to protect the American citizens?
If I had a weak conscience that I could live with torturing this guy with a high likelihood he’ll either give me false info or none at all(which is mostly the case), sure, torture away. But that’s not me, I’m a better human than that.
No, we don’t torture. Period. Nazis tortured. Saadamm Ba’athists tortured. Idi Amin tortured. Torquemada the Grand Inquisitor tortured. I don’t want to, or think that Americans should be anywhere near those class of people. Period.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I don’t put pouring water over someone’s face in the same category as feeding people through woodchippers.
Just out of curiosity, where is my faulty logic. Could you point it out? I always thought I was pretty good at logic. I know it has been a while, but I did get an A+ when I took it in college.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
BTW, did you read the link to the article that said they waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed for 90 seconds and his revelations helped arrest at least 6 major terrorists. It’s linked in my post.
Is this not true? It seems to go against your assertions.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
“Imagine you are in charge of the government and you have detained a high-level official in a terrorist network, who absolutely will not talk, despite having information on current plots to kill hundreds or thousands of Americans. Can you really substitute your judgment of what is or is not civilized, or is it your duty to protect the American citizens?”
This is a false assumption I think. I’m no expert on interrogation, but the interrogator has at his or her disposal any number of techniques that are proven to work at getting real, useful, actionable intelligence from just about any person…deception, cohersion, simpathy, etc. (I’m sure there are others). These techniques work; torture does not get you real, actionable intelligence. It gets you whatever you want to hear, which a lot of times may not be the truth. Ever been questioned by the authorities? These people know what they are doing.
We all use some form of morality to make judgements about what to do in our own lives. Where you get your morality just might be a little different from where I get mine. Murder is wrong; it is therefore illegal. It’s wrong, IMO, because I myself would not want to be murdered. It just doesn’t make good sense to me to allow people to wander around murdering each other willy-nilly…society would break down in that kind of world. The whole “do unto others as you would have them do onto you” just makes sense to me no matter whether you think it came from the lips of God or not.
Waterboarding is *not* just “pouring water over someone’s face” for “90 seconds”…it’s simulated drowning. The person that is really being waterboared isn’t some dopey “journalist” that knows that the waterflow will stop just before he or she dies. Would you like to be drowned? I’m guessing the answer is no, which is why I think it’s wrong. Imagine how much more information “KSM” (as I’ve heard many conservatives call him – as if they are on a first name, buddy-buddy basis with him…lol…) would have given us if we treated him like a human being? And no, my heart does not bleed for the man…
November 7th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
You’re trying to have it all ways. You say:
BTW, did you read the link to the article that said they waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed for 90 seconds and his revelations helped arrest at least 6 major terrorists.
And yet you refer to waterboarding a couple comments before as:
pouring water over someone’s face
If that’s all it is, Khalid was hardly the tough guy he’s made out to be, eh?
Pouring water over somebody’s face would likely get them to laugh at you. Waterboarding is drowning them, then making sure they don’t actually die by drowning. Playing this off as no bif deal on the one hand, but incredibly effective on the other doesn’t fit.
I don’t doubt that you can sometimes (although clearly not reliably) get information from someone by torturing them. You could no doubt also get information from them by raping and mutilating their loved ones in front of them.
I don’t think that’s the issue. Why? Because both are immoral.
Or are there no moral values that can be sacrificed in the name of standing up to the liberals (who are, of course, supposedly without morals)
November 7th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
“Pouring water on someone’s face?” No wonder you don’t think it’s torture. It’s not just pouring water on someone’s face. It’s pouring it into their mouth and nose. You really think FOX news is going to put it in a bad light? If the guy almost died would they have still shown it? Do your research.
And yes I knew about the Sheik, and no, that doesn’t change anything. It’s still wrong.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
“Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.”
— Malcom Nance, describing his experience being waterboarded as part of SERE training.
I don’t think the FOX news hack had to wonder if they were going to stop or not.
November 7th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I understand what waterboarding is and I am not trying to make light of it, but tell me there is no distinction between that and the physically mutilating kinds of torture that JD was comparing it to. I think there is a difference. I am not saying that one is right and one is wrong, just that they vary in degree of pain and suffering inflicted.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Hey everybody- interesting debate-
my 2 cents:
My “emotional” response:
Torture dehumanizes both the torturer and the tortured. It is in violation of “the golden rule” which exists in various forms in every religious/spiritual tradition. It is immoral. (There is no such thing as “torture that’s not so bad.”) Even though American POW’s have been tortured in the past, the US could always claim its moral superiority and objection, and punish those who used it. In some cases, maybe our previous stance has even prevented torture. Now that the Bush administration has made torture “policy,” we can no longer make that moral claim. My young son is a soldier, did a tour of duty driving a hummer in the Sunni Triangle. If he, or any other soldier were captured and tortured, the torturers could do so without condemnation, as the US government would be labeled “hypocrites.” Does anyone remember the response of “the terrorists” after the revelations of ABU Ghraib?? That’s when they started chopping off the heads of captured foreigners. I don’t think people realize just what we have lost. I, for one, am F+++++G furious!!! Cheney/Bush have betrayed our military. And broken the law.
My rational response:
Torture doesn’t work. Even conservatives who have experienced torture as POWs have said so. WWII interrogators have reported they received better, and correct, intel from the nazi’s while playing cards with them, than pouring water down their throats. People who feel unbearable pain or feel as though they are going to die will say anything to make it stop. The info they give is often false and/or unreliable. The risk taken to use torture was greater than the risk to find other ways to gather info. Cheney/Bush did it their own, brutal way, and we will all pay the price for it.