Waterboarding Mancow
Yesterday on WLS-AM in Chicago, a fairly conservative talk-show host, Eric "Mancow" Mueller, underwent waterboarding while on the air. Mancow emerged after a few seconds to say that the frightening experience convinced him that this interrogation technique is torture, which he didn't believe going in. He said it felt like he was drowning, which he almost did as a boy, and that he would have said anything to get get them to stop. Not having experienced waterboarding (nor will I be so naive as to volunteer for it), I feel compelled to say the following:
1. Of course the experience is extremely scary and unpleasant-that's why interrogators sometimes use it.
2. Just because waterboarding is extremely unpleasant doesn't make it torture, for the following reasons:
a. There was no intent to torture, either in this instance or when interrogating terror suspects, which is required legally to ascertain whether torture has taken place.
b. There was no physical or psychological injury to Mancow, meaning that the technique, however bad it is, does not qualify as torture.
c. Waterboarding was used as a training technique for hundreds of U.S. soldiers, yet they don't call it torture and in fact have not sued the U.S. government as torture victims.
Waterboarding, at least as practiced by the United States, is a dreadful interrogation technique that has yielded some potentially life-saving information. But it is not torture.
If it were, Nancy Pelosi would have spoken up before now.
posted by Stan Guthrie at 11:47 AM
StanGuthrie.com
2 Comments:
So, Stan, now you're defending waterboarding? One of the thousands (millions?) of evangelicals who are A-OK with waterboarding ... Great ...
You say "there was no intent to torture," but don't you think that U.S. interrogators at Gitmo holding suspected anti-American radical Islamic terrorists in their hands with full authority to use these "enhanced interrogation methods" *might* have had a little bit of "intent" to cause pain and suffering to those [fill in the blank - bleepity bleep] people ... ?
I think any definition of torture that relies on knowing someone's "intent to torture" is horribly flawed. For example, the main identifying factor of a psychopath is that they have no emotional concern for the people who they harm. You might recall the movie "Silence of the Lambs" where a psychopath is kidnapping women to starve them, kill them, and slice off their flesh. That guy didn't care about the women he was putting through an "experience" that was "extremely scary and unpleasant" either. But I would still call what is depicted in that film as "torture," but you would apparently not, am I right?
And just to be clear, hundred of U.S. soldiers have been waterboarded, yes, and at least one of them has had the courage to speak up and say "yes, it is torture," and that would be the former governor of the great state of Minnesota (my home state), Jesse Ventura. Yes, I'm appealing to Jesse Ventura in my argument against waterboarding (for better or worse). Watch the clip from "The View" -- Ventura pwns Hasselbeck.
You can keep trying to blame this stuff on Nancy Pelosi, too BTW. She's not smelling like roses either, but I don't think most of America is going to buy that the whole program is her fault.
And if you plan to keep defending waterboarding, then I think you should have the guts to try it. It's good enough for our men and women in uniform, but not for you, Stan? Come on ...
Steve,
I'm defending it unless I get clear info it was torture. Like you, I don't believe the U.S. should ever torture. That violates not only the prisoners (made in the image of God) torture is used against, but our ideals as a free people. It is also against our Christian principles.
But do I believe tough tactics are sometimes justified against those seeking to kill innocent human life? Yes.
Stan
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