Another shining example...

[j. d. worthington]

Of why this country keeps losing credibility with the rest of the world...

Bush to veto bill banning waterboarding - Yahoo! News

Title: "Bush to veto bill banning waterboarding", from AP, datelined Fri., Mar. 7, 2008.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.

Ummm, I don't see how banning one technique takes away an entire program. Someone care to clarify....?

[Delvo]

Lack of other permitted techniques that can get similar results.

[littlemissattitude]

I've tried writing several responses to this. None of them come close to explaining why I think this decision by Bush is a bad thing.

So, I'll just sigh and leave it at that.

*shakes head sadly, wondering what happened to the country I was raised in, because this wouldn't happen there*

[Overread]

It also looked to ban sensory deprivation -- don't hold me to this, but dosn't the UK army have a simlar program for sensory deprivation?

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Delvo

Lack of other permitted techniques that can get similar results.

"Similar results"? From all I've seen and heard, even people who have a long experience with such programs (not to mention people who have studied the results of such techniques) confirm that the "results" gained are extremely unreliable at best, tending toward the same results you'd get with most other torture techniques (I know: this one has been officially labeled "not torture", but that's sort of like labeling a dead skunk as "natural fertilizer"): they say what they think you want to hear, whether there's any truth there or not (the vast majority of the time, not.....)

[j. d. worthington]

Not surprisingly, this action of the man in the Oval Office has not gone unchallenged... or at least unprotested....

Democrats criticize Bush's CIA-bill veto - Yahoo! News

Title: "Democrats criticize Bush's CIA-bill veto", from AP, by Deb Riechmann, datelined Sun., Mar. 9, 2008.

[The Ace]

You said it all JD. Next time, vote Democrat.

[pyan]

Do you honestly think that'll make much difference, Ace? It doesn't seem to make much over here....Labour or Tory, the Civil Service actually govern...

[The Ace]

Of course it won't make a difference, except to tell the government that their people are unhappy.

Why do you think Labour are losing ground to the SNP in Scotland ?

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

"Similar results"? From all I've seen and heard, even people who have a long experience with such programs (not to mention people who have studied the results of such techniques) confirm that the "results" gained are extremely unreliable at best, tending toward the same results you'd get with most other torture techniques (I know: this one has been officially labeled "not torture", but that's sort of like labeling a dead skunk as "natural fertilizer"): they say what they think you want to hear, whether there's any truth there or not (the vast majority of the time, not.....)

That is obviously pretty disputed, because if all agreed that it doesn't work then nobody would have any incentive to bother with it. It is said that this technique and others that people call "torture" have succeeded in getting certain pieces of important and accurate information.

Even if that's not accurate and it really doesn't work, that doesn't change the fact that enough people believe it does. And your question about how eliminating the practice is bad only applies to those people who think that way, because obviously the ones who think it doesn't work aren't the ones who said that getting rid of it would be bad. So, the question was essentially how how banning it would seem to be bad from those people's perspective, not someone else's like yours. And from that perspective, the answer is that not only does it work, but it's the only thing they're allowed to do that works like it because everything else with similar results is already banned.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Delvo

That is obviously pretty disputed, because if all agreed that it doesn't work then nobody would have any incentive to bother with it. It is said that this technique and others that people call "torture" have succeeded in getting certain pieces of important and accurate information.

Even if that's not accurate and it really doesn't work, that doesn't change the fact that enough people believe it does. And your question about how eliminating the practice is bad only applies to those people who think that way, because obviously the ones who think it doesn't work aren't the ones who said that getting rid of it would be bad. So, the question was essentially how how banning it would seem to be bad from those people's perspective, not someone else's like yours. And from that perspective, the answer is that not only does it work, but it's the only thing they're allowed to do that works like it because everything else with similar results is already banned.

Delvo, even the interrogators for various defense and intelligence organizations have gone on record to state that methods like this are thoroughly unreliable. There have been innumerable studies done on this time and again, and the consensus is the same. Yes, there are those who will dispute it, but they fly in the face of the evidence, much as creationists do. (And recall, our current president is of that number, nor has he ever been particularly persuaded by any evidence that goes against what he wishes to do.)

Again, there may be cases where you get valid information, but a) they are vastly overwhelmed by the number of cases where this is not the case, and you're indulging in torture for no genuine result and b) you can't be sure any of the information you're getting is valid without various other evidence to back it up.

As for people continuing to do this despite evidence it doesn't work... have you forgotten the fact that torture has been used throughout human history on a particular subgroup or those who were "political enemies" or whatever (witchcraft trials, anyone?) where lots of information and even confessions were obtained... all complete nonsense, said to simply get the torture to stop. That's what we're dealing with here, as well.

As for this:

your question about how eliminating the practice is bad only applies to those people who think that way, because obviously the ones who think it doesn't work aren't the ones who said that getting rid of it would be bad.

I'm sorry, but I can't make heads or tails of that sentence. At first it seems that you're saying that my question about how eliminating the practice is bad (which I'm not certain about what you mean there to begin with) only applies to the critics of the technique, but then you finish up by saying that these are the very people who think getting rid of it would be bad. At least, that's how it reads to me. The rest of the paragraph is equally muddled, confusing those who are opposed to those who are in favor by referring to them alternately as if they were from the same perspective.

Essentially my point is that it is agreed not only among those who support this procedure that it is only not torture by a very evasive definition, which puts us in the camp of performing the very acts we condemn in any other country's government; the experts almost unanimously agree that it is unreliable at best and leads to a sense of overconfidence in poor information (and therefore plans based on such information) at worst (costing, not saving, lives); and it is overwhelmingly opposed by the majority of those in government as well as the people of this nation and others. Once again, this administration is willing to go to any lengths to promote its agenda, regardless of the morality of it, the practicality of the procedures, the facts concerning it, or the complete erosion of our standing at home or in the world community.

Whether Bush and his cronies believe something to be the case does not lessen by one whit the wrong of the action they support; by that argument, everything the Nazis (or any other oppressive or tyrannical regime) did was completely justified.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Delvo, even the interrogators for various defense and intelligence organizations have gone on record to state that methods like this are thoroughly unreliable.

Some have. If it were a solidly established fact, then interrogators would have no use for it, and wouldn't waste time and effort on it whether it was forbidden or not. Feeding prisoners banana pudding also isn't banned, but they don't do that, because they're sure there's nothing to gain from the banana pudding technique.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

There have been innumerable studies done on this time and again, and the consensus is the same. Yes, there are those who will dispute it, but they fly in the face of the evidence, much as creationists do.

I am not asserting that it does. I have not looked into it myself, but I do know that it's not as simple and one-sided as that, and even some of the people who say it doesn't work give away some signs of believing that it does, such as writing proposed laws against it which include exceptions for emergency situations. If they really thought it was useless, then it would be useless in emergencies, too, which makes the objection that it doesn't work sound like some other peculiar dishonest denials of the past, like the original insistence by the medical and weightlifting communities that steroids didn't work: not objective and factual in nature, but wishful, saying that something we don't WANT to work doesn't work.

But maybe it doesn't, not even indirectly (to get the info from someone else, not the person it's actual being done to). Like I said, I haven't drawn a conclusion. But whether it works or not isn't really the issue here, partially because there's another big reason to object to it anyway (holding ourselves to a higher standard of humanity anyway) and because it doesn't affect this issue we're talking about here. So everything I'm saying works the same even with the stipulation that it doesn't work.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

have you forgotten the fact that torture has been used throughout human history on a particular subgroup or those who were "political enemies" or whatever

All irrelevant to the modern situation. Past users of such methods didn't have scientific, statistical studies about the effectiveness, and might not have cared if their motivation was something other than getting information. (It was usually punishment, intimidation of third parties, and such.)

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I'm sorry, but I can't make heads or tails of that sentence... The rest of the paragraph is equally muddled, confusing those who are opposed to those who are in favor by referring to them alternately as if they were from the same perspective.

No, only one, no flipping back and forth. There's no need for me to explain the "anti" side to someone who's already familiar with it and apparently on it. And you didn't ask about the "anti" side. You asked about the "pro" side. I'm not on the "pro" side myself, but I can at least understand it enough to know that that it can't be understood from the "anti" side's frame of reference that the technique is useless, when the "pro" side's frame of reference is that it's useful. That would be like asking an Aztec priest why he isn't afraid of going to the Christian Hell for torturing and murdering captured warriors from wars with other tribes, when he doesn't consider that evil and doesn't believe in Hell. The only way his actions can be understood is from his own perspective.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

Whether Bush and his cronies believe something to be the case does not lessen by one whit the wrong of the action they support; by that argument, everything the Nazis (or any other oppressive or tyrannical regime) did was completely justified.

True, but we weren't talking about whether or not it's justified. We were talking about how someone who believes that it is could say what he said. And the answer to that is that, from HIS perspective, taking it away is taking away the only tool he has of its type and thus preventing him from doing the job that that tool enables him to do. Our considering something wrong doesn't mean it just appeared from nowhere; even the nastiest things in the world have chains of cause and effect leading up to them, or logical processes that lead to them from different sets of facts as the starting points. For that matter, the more you object to something and want to fight it, the more crucial it becomes to understand how it got the way it is.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Delvo

That is obviously pretty disputed, because if all agreed that it doesn't work then nobody would have any incentive to bother with it. It is said that this technique and others that people call "torture" have succeeded in getting certain pieces of important and accurate information.

Sure, waterboarding will get results quickly. I think you have completely missed JDs point.

After several hours I'm quite sure I'd admit to being a terrorist, as well as implicating my wife, my mother, my neighbours and their dog. None of that information is going to be of any use to anyone.

But the people who need to be seen to be getting results can at least prove that they are doing something. And in politics proving that you are doing something about terrorism is often more important than actually doing anything. That is the incentive you are looking for.

[iansales]

The US is a signatory of CAT (Convention Against Torture). Torture is also illegal within the US, and if practised by US military personnel anywhere (according to the US Uniform Code of Military Justice). Bush has to claim water-boarding is not torture - despite all opinion to the contrary - because otherwise he is responsible for his administration condoning and performing an illegal act.

It has got to the point now where the UK will not share information with the US because they do not want to be implicated in torturing people.

It amazes me Bush hasn't been impeached yet. They impeached Clinton for having sex with an intern while in office and lying about it. Compared to Bush's actions, that's not even a minor peccadillo...

[Foxbat]

Further to Ian's point - here's the Amnesty International stance on the situation

USA: Water torture always illegal | Amnesty International