it's torture according to you - not authoritative bodies - so your comments should be qualified correspondingly...

stopping torture was not a reason for ousting Hussein - it was an ancillary benefit - and as you seem to be so adamantly opposed to torture I wanted to hear your take on his particular methods - but now you say you are only opposed to American torture? But just above that you said you opposed it everywhere it happens - which means you should oppose it overseas as well as domestically - you don't seem to have your story straight here...

You believe that everyone the US captures receives some form of torture. Do you even know what the role of an interrogator is? How they go about their job? How many times will they talk, just talk, to someone? There is countless hours of interviews, checking the information, forming new questions to be asked, etc. When answers do not match know information, more interviews are conducted. It is a long drawn out process. Torture is a relative term. I'm tortured when filling up my gas tank, or grocery shopping. Try sitting in Beltway traffic for three hours, now thats torture. To a interrogator, "physical methods" is a last resort when information is known by the subject and other means have failed. If you want to call it torture, fine. My best form of "torture" was to keep them in a white cell with white sheets/blankets, white chair, white etc. The lights would never go out and every few hours I would change the time on the clock either forward or backwards. Pump in a little heavy metal, overlapped with punk, music. Go ahead, call it torture. It amazes me how many people "deplore" torture but really have no understanding on the total process. And yes there is more, but maybe its time for your private studies. Go research.

During this time with political correctness at its zenith, I reserve the right to let you know you're an idiot.

Fingernails? Your kidding, right? There are other ways of getting information. By your defination, sleep depravation is torture. I guess standing for extended periods of time is to. You still have not told me your experience in obtaining information from the enemy. So I take it you have 0 experience. In intelligence or military. I am right...your posts are evidence enough.

Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!

Consider this possibility: After a long day of you pulling out his fingernails, he guessed the right answer to your question. And you've made an enemy for life out of an innocent man.

Hahahahahahaha!  You think we ask him.  "We need to know the following because it will help us defeat you...?

Here, I will clue you in about some OTHER very unfriendly regimes handle it.  NOt saying WE do it but this will defeat your statement that that "Torture" is ineffective because it gives bad information.

They gather as much intelligence on the subject and his situation with in the organization as possible.  Including his family.  (Our enemies have been known to use the US press to collect this information as well as the Anti-war groups.)

Then they begin asking the detainee simple and fairly innocuous questions.  How many kids, wifes name, etc.  THis does two things, it tells them when the guy is telling falshoods as well as gives the detainee the knowledge that the interogator knows more than the detainee thinks.

When the detainee tells a falsehood he is punished for it.  THis becomes a great motivator.

The questions become more and more useful, but they still only ask questions you can get a verifiable answer to and punish any falshoods. 

Then they approach the needed Information Requirement from an oblique manner, usually making the question seem more innocuous than the questions they already know the answers to.

Invariably the detainee answers with no evasion. 

It will undoubtedly shock you that we also...

Not shocked. I am shocked that you seem to think there's not much difference really in interrogation tactics, nor should there be, between the savages in Al Qaeda and this country.

You do not think there is a great deal of difference between us waterboarding three senior AQ detainees for a few seconds per, and the torturing to death of our troops.  I pity you.

To BD and the other unreformed sadists out there I'm still curious to know if you have engaged in what you yourself would term torture.

So, I am a sadist because I state the truth that the process is both effective and  sometimes necessary?

You made several false statements and I called you on them.

1.)  Torture is ineffective.

2.)  THe US has lost face because we have waterboarded three seperate AQ leadership caste targets.

3.)  We are an evil nation who others do not respect.

4.)  Our enemeis will treat our POWs worse because of this.  (I still giggle)

Believe it or not, I have been on a minor form of the practice from the receiving end as a simulated prisoner in an exercise.  Mild compared to what most US troops receive at SERE school, which is usually as bad as waterboarding.  And not even mentionable in comparison to what our troops receive from our enemies.

If you define torture as waterboarding, your definition is too narrow, and not only according to my opinion but also according to our laws and the international treaties we've signed.

What other forms of torture do you believe have been conducted by the US?

Under the current Geneva Convention's, we are actually allowed to conduct what is known as Justifiable Repraisal during wartime in order to get our enemeies to re-adhere to the conventions.  What this means is that since our prisoners are tortured to death, the conventions allow us to perform a similar act on our enemies in an effort to get them to act in accordance.

So far, we could have done all of the actions I have specified before and more.  We have done virtually NOTHING.

So please do not talk about treaties until you have studied them.

On the positive side, you're one baby step further than the current administration who won't even confirm that bit of obviousness.

If you are referring to my stipulation that waterboarding would be reffered to as torture to further the discussion with you.  Other than that I actually do not believe that it is.

To everyone who wants so badly to believe we have executed this WOT perfectly and only the bad guys are getting hurt because that's what the President and the DOD tell us,

Perfectly?  No.  Pretty DAMN GOOD?  YEP!

We have freed 50+ Million people at the cost of less than 5,000 US lives and we continue to make progress.

I do not and never will share your blind faith.

Nor do you know my comrades, nor our mission. 

Nor how we live or what we think.

Not because I am a traitor

Nope, but your views are from a sheltered life.

Get your head out of the sand.

I am not the one with a headful of sand.   You are apparently the one who believes war can be one without violence and unpleasantness.

"Buh, buh, but they're doing it tooo!!!!" is not any kind of mature defense of our flaws.

Do I need to re-emphasize the nature of the concept of "Justifiable Repraisal in an effort to re-adhere"?

To those of you who see no problem with us lifting our interrogation techniques from Communist China and Nazi Germany, that's disturbing.

Actually, the first time I ever heard of the Waterboarding technique, it was presented as a discussion in passing by a Liberian Exchange officer who called it the wet sock torture.  The Jordanian, Saudi, and Filipino Officers in the group all nodded that it was not unknown to them as well.

We tried to teach them the 5 S's as a thr eporper way to handle prisoners (Search, SIlence, Segragate, Safeguard, speed tot he rear) and they all laughed.

So it is not the CHinese and Nazi's.

And to pretty much any one willing to ponder the question: do you believe in war crimes?

Yes, but my definitions are based on law and treaties and gained by years of study.  How did you come by your views?

I have had libs tell me shooting an enemy who was not trying to shoot me first is "a warcrime." 

I have had libs like you tell me that using snipers against an enemy squatting over a cooking fire is "a warcrime."

I have had libs tell me that using ambush techniques while not saying "Throw down you arms and come out with your hands up" is a warcrime.

Personnally, I will use the definition of warcrime to define such activities as placing an IED in a toy and throwing over the wall of a family of an Iraqi soldier so that the children will pick them up and blow them to shreds. 

Or placing an IED in the corpse of a kidnapped five year old so the parents can be blown up when they come to claim the body.

Or diving an VBIED into a crowd at a school to kill rival children by the scores.

Now, were you talking about warcrimes?

Or is any atrocity that happens associated with war something we should just accept?

Do you REALLY seek to equivocate our actions with those of our enemies.  Really?  REALLY!?

If you're ever in the DC area, look me up.

Uh, now it all makes sense.