Is waterboarding torture?
What I find ironic about the whole uproar over torture, is that just days after 9/11 terminally-Liberal Al Franken, on Bill Mahrer's show, argued (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but this is contextually accurate) "I bet some of these guys would tell us what we need to know with a red-hot poker up their a**." If memory serves me correctly, that got a laugh out of every Liberal, but a polite nod from the token Conservative.
Basically there are two types of information one would need from someone held by authorities: Information to use against them and information needed to save lives. The Founding Fathers attempted to prevent torture with the Fifth Amendment, which forbids anyone being forced to testify against themselves. That hasn't stopped the courts from allowing police to frighten or trick suspects into a confession, completely against the obvious meaning of that amendment. But now we have people who want to forbid more or less similar techniques used by the government to obtain information which could save lives.
Waterboarding does no permanent, physical damage. It makes one think they are drowning, which I would imagine is an incredibly unpleasant feeling. Another unpleasant feeling--the fear that your children will be taken away from you, and you'll never see them again. This is done daily across the US by overzealous social workers attempting to force "confessions" from parents suspected of abuse or neglect. Given the choice I think I'd prefer waterboarding.
The logic behind the Fifth Amendment is that when faced with fear, a person may very well lie about their guilt or innocence choosing imprisonment over torture or death. The result is not the truth or justice. But when the goal isn't a guilty verdict but information needed to save lives the equation changes.
The question then becomes, is it fair or just to put a person through a mentally unpleasant event in order to extract information which can save lives? Ironically those who scream loudest against waterboarding would be those most adamantly in favor of allowing social workers unfettered power in using just as merciless and cruel techniques against parents suspected of abuse or neglect, most often based solely on an anonymous tip.
Whether we as a "civilized society" can tolerate torture has been answered by how we allow social workers and police to use mental torture on those suspected of a crime. Since waterboarding results in no actual physical harm to the person the difference then is whether we will tolerate what we allow on US citizens barely suspected of a crime to be used on known terrorists who have information that could save lives.
Why is this even a debate?
Posted by Danny Carlton at January 2, 2008 7:27 AM