Debating about whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture or not is not the point. keeping someone awke for hours on ened is torture. using advanced interogation techniques to confuse them is torture. It all comes down to what type of torure breaks the line. i don't think waterboarding does, but I can understand those that do. Quick note on this- using examples of waterboarding from many years ago is not really fair. The technique used today is much different. No actual water is forced into someone's lungs in the use of the technique now. The forcing of water into their lungs was the point that went over the line in past examples. That and the fact that it was not monitored. Plenty of doctors and psychologists have affirmed that under certain constraints, waterboarding produces no long term physical or mental harm. Now, I see a lot of responses that torure only produces low grade intel and that someone will say anything to get you to stop. This is, of course where the subtlety in the technique comes in. If you interrogate all of them, patterns will present themselves. No way these idiots have cooked up the same lie to every type of question. You just have to analze the data and do your best to decipher the truth. If you ask every detainee to make a list of key terrorists under the threat of waterboarding I would guess the majority would give up the same names. You might miss some, but you would catch many. If the same name showed up on 75% of the lists then you focus on that name and use outside intel to try and confirm things. Its not that hard. And it is effective.
Shark, I think you'll be fighting an uphill battle regarding the efficacy of torture (regardless of the ethics of it). Here's another study debunking the use of torture... Study debunks effectiveness of torture
We'll rue the day we didn't put a bullet in the back of every head at Gitmo. Lesson: don't take prisoners
A) he was a true enemy combatant and we let him go free B) he was not an enemy combatant and after being wrongfully imprisoned for years without charges or recourse by a country that extolls the virtue of the rule of law he became an enemy of the coutnry that wrongfully imprisoned him Which is the correct answer Wash? Your post seems to assume the first and dismiss the latter. But I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Oh, to be strung up by one's own words. Wish hard on that star that comprehension truly escapes any who chances upon this thread. I know I couldn't take the embarrassment.
If I was kidnapped and tortured by Canada's "intelligence" services I would probably try to blow up a lot of RCMP outposts.