Ok… so I can’t sleep… I have no one who probably cares or wants to hear me philosophize about this issue or any others for that matter…lol… but it is bothering me. For the past 1 ½ years I have lost my drive and passion to philosophize and articulate my thoughts… but something has changed back. Back to how it was… my heart stirs and I must write my thoughts out before they explode.
"Waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning, dates back to at least the Spanish Inquisition, and has been used by some of the world's cruelest dictatorships, according to Human Rights Watch.Forms of waterboarding vary but generally consist of immobilizing an individual on his or her back - head inclined downward - and pouring water over the face to induce the sensation of drowning.Other techniques include dunking prisoners head-first into water, as was used by Chadian military forces in the mid 1980s. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Cambodians during the 1970s, strapped victims on inclined boards, with feet raised and head lowered, and covered their faces with cloth or cellophane. Water then was poured over their mouths to stimulate drowning.Waterboarding, long considered a form of torture by the United States, produces a gag reflex and makes the victim believe death is imminent. The technique leaves no visible physical damage."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/national/main3441363.shtml
Sean Hannity, of Fox News, offered to undergo waterboarding (jokingly) for the military families... to make a point that waterboarding should be perfectly legal to use on detainees the US military have to gain information/confessions...
Keith Oberman, of MSNBC, would like to take Hannity up on this offer... watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzK5FNjBsrA, Oberman has offered to donate $1,000.00 for every second Hannity undergoes waterboarding…
There are a lot of things that separate (OR at least should) the United States from terrorists. One of the most important and quintessential differences is that we uphold human dignity and do not stoop to the awful lows the terrorists have resorted to.
To torture and abuse another human being is to forfeit reason. No reasonable person tortures another person. To excuse torture for the purpose of retribution or tactics-IS NOT REASONABLE. We are asking and allowing humans to torture under the justification that they are terrorists or criminals. To me, it’s the same logic a parent teaching a child not to steal but the parent teaching the child steals themselves( I am sure there are better examples... but it's late)
"Waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning, dates back to at least the Spanish Inquisition, and has been used by some of the world's cruelest dictatorships, according to Human Rights Watch.Forms of waterboarding vary but generally consist of immobilizing an individual on his or her back - head inclined downward - and pouring water over the face to induce the sensation of drowning.Other techniques include dunking prisoners head-first into water, as was used by Chadian military forces in the mid 1980s. The Khmer Rouge, responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Cambodians during the 1970s, strapped victims on inclined boards, with feet raised and head lowered, and covered their faces with cloth or cellophane. Water then was poured over their mouths to stimulate drowning.Waterboarding, long considered a form of torture by the United States, produces a gag reflex and makes the victim believe death is imminent. The technique leaves no visible physical damage."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/national/main3441363.shtml
Sean Hannity, of Fox News, offered to undergo waterboarding (jokingly) for the military families... to make a point that waterboarding should be perfectly legal to use on detainees the US military have to gain information/confessions...
Keith Oberman, of MSNBC, would like to take Hannity up on this offer... watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzK5FNjBsrA, Oberman has offered to donate $1,000.00 for every second Hannity undergoes waterboarding…
There are a lot of things that separate (OR at least should) the United States from terrorists. One of the most important and quintessential differences is that we uphold human dignity and do not stoop to the awful lows the terrorists have resorted to.
To torture and abuse another human being is to forfeit reason. No reasonable person tortures another person. To excuse torture for the purpose of retribution or tactics-IS NOT REASONABLE. We are asking and allowing humans to torture under the justification that they are terrorists or criminals. To me, it’s the same logic a parent teaching a child not to steal but the parent teaching the child steals themselves( I am sure there are better examples... but it's late)
… What happened at Guantanamo Bay was inhumane and wrong. Now do not take this as a declaration of the detainee’s innocence… that is not what I am saying at all. Rather I am pointing out there are right ways of going about things… and there are wrong ways of going about things. In the past the United States declared waterboarding wrongful and inhumane by convicting people who performed such torture;
“A Punishable Offense
In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.
On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.
Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
“A Punishable Offense
In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.
On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.
Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
To retract and justify the waterboarding that occurred at Guantanamo Bay is to retract these past convictions… Retraction of such would be hypocritical.
I want to liken my argument unto one more thing before I go to bed…
We don’t negotiate with terrorists? Correct?
Correct.
Why? Because we are not like the terrorists and we refuse to level with them. ( there are a plethora of other reasons as well)… Why then, would our justice system as well as the American public allow and justify a torture terrorists would regard as humane (or maybe fair game if they were to practice it on their hostages)? The reason I ask this is because if we do stoop to the level of torture as well as justify it, we then would be regarding their tactics to be in the categories of humane and (as Sean Hannity would put it)- acceptable. We are a nation founded on principles such as the natural light of reason. Torture undermines this and obliterates our legitimacy.
Correct.
Why? Because we are not like the terrorists and we refuse to level with them. ( there are a plethora of other reasons as well)… Why then, would our justice system as well as the American public allow and justify a torture terrorists would regard as humane (or maybe fair game if they were to practice it on their hostages)? The reason I ask this is because if we do stoop to the level of torture as well as justify it, we then would be regarding their tactics to be in the categories of humane and (as Sean Hannity would put it)- acceptable. We are a nation founded on principles such as the natural light of reason. Torture undermines this and obliterates our legitimacy.
Terrorists have been brainwashed from day one to die for their cause. Death merits them some kind of martyrdom and whatever they may suffer is not endured in vain but a privilege and they believe they will be rewarded. Our own military is also trained to sacrifice and if the end result is death-so be it- this is to ensure the victims do not divulge information/give in.(why then would we reason that waterboarding would demoralize their cause ?!? It is not reasonable to think this way) Many terrorists are born with the notion that their purpose in this life is to die for their principles. To try to level and reason with these types of individuals is unreasonable... Stooping to the low of torture is NOT something MY(YOURS TOO!) Country should tolerate...
Waterboarding is torture. It was inhumane before 9-11 and the War on Terror and it ought to be now…
Some of this may have not made any sense… I am jumbled and flustered about the matter so I just had to splatter my thoughts onto this page…
HANNITY...I too DECLARE... that you ought to fulfill your commitment and put your money where your mouth is.
