The Tao of Sensory Deprivation Tanks
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21698732/
"Senate confirms Mukasey as attorney general
Bush nominee wins backing for post despite waterboarding flap"
Doesn't this sort of remind the reader of the ol' steroid game pro athletes play? You know, a performance enhancing agent gets banned, Chemists and hustlers develop an alternative not on the list, not able to be readily detected, athletes then perfrom wonderous feats of strength and agility, records get broken, kudos and perks flow their way, then they fall into disgrace once the evil chemical is identified and banned by the agencies in charge of monitoring and regulating such affairs. I had thought to title this post " The Tao of Sensory Deprivation Tanks, or, The Ying and Yang of Torture" but I haven't yet even begun to understand the Islamic mind let alone the Asian mind, so let's leave sleeping dogs alone in their slumber.
Can you imagine how many hearings and how much time it would take our august govermental bodies to come to grips with the use of sensory deprivation tanks? How much research? How many hearings? How many tax dollars for paid consultants - then the same round of inquiry and hearings applied to allies who use such techniques? there's no physical pain involved with this technique, sort of like solitary confinement in that respect or for that matter much like the general idea of isolating certain people from society to begin with. When good will, reason, brotherly love, hugs, empathy, rationality and the Golden Rule of Law fails us in the effort to prevent the loss of our lives and property, we at least can still hold the high moral ground and have lots of solemn hearings and testimony - they can't take that from us.
SWJ amd Malcom Nance on Waterboarding
At McClatchy News today..
Quote:
Does America (heart) waterboarding?
By Mark Paul | Moonbats and Wingnuts
... “Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period,” agrees terrorism expert Malcolm Nance at Small Wars Journal. “Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that…when done right is controlled death.” Eric Mueller, law professor at the University of North Carolina, cites decisions from Mississippi courts in the 1920s that found waterboarding to be torture, even in a case where it was used on a young black man charged with killing a white man. “If it was torture in Mississippi, then it's definitely torture, right?” Mueller asks?
Waterboarding ceased three years ago and I wouldn't bet
the farm on closing Gitmo -- though, in fairness, I don't know anyone who doesn't want to close it; current Admin included. They just can't figure out what to do with the remaining residents...
Don't know whose idea Gitmo was in the first place but it was a dumb one. I couldn't figure out why they didn't just keep those guys in the 'Stan. Last count I saw, about twelve who'd been released had gone right back to doing what got them picked up in the first place -- and all that have been released were thought to have been unlikely to 'reoffend.'
'Vomiting and screaming' in destroyed waterboarding tapes
A BBC News report on an item on the Newsnight programme (which I expect is not available in the USA).
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17990955
Quote:
Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned. The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez. In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.
Abu Buckwheat has a short interview clip and comments:
Quote:
Waterboarding is drowning in a slow, controlled manner.
A curious time for the BBC item as waterboarding and perhaps other interrogation tactics are to the fore in a Guantanamo Bay trial, which I am sure have been covered fully elsewhere.
(Added here as this is the first clear thread on waterboarding, research found there were no threads with water boarding, although my recollection is that there are other, longer threads concerning interrogation methods and associated debating here).
Dangerous trend in Definitional gaming around Waterboarding
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shivan
Personal value judgment. Let the U.S. Congress (a) define waterboarding (b) determine if it is illegal under international and/or U.S. law and (c) act accordingly.
Actually, I live in the Mid East off and on, and speak Arabic. Having mingled with Arabs from all walks of life, waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, etc. is only an issue among Western liberals. Arabs think of us a far too genteel and naive in many aspects. The greatest grievance among many Arabs towards my dear Uncle Sam is that they cannot get visas to America.
True points that our eastern establishment media will not address. Perhaps a pure example of western arrogancy, not being able to see past our own collective nose as relates to being offended by the realities of war.
I have come more and more to see this cultural divide as symptomatic of the dysfunctions attendant to the dolorous "nation that separates its warriors from its scholars."
Perhaps you are aware of a dangerous trend I've noticed emerging from the "seminar caller" sector online and on-the-air. Prosecutions of previous war crimes, i.e. severe water torture via-a-vis stomach flooding followed by stick beating to rupture, are being semantically conflated with present water-boarding techniques.
The result is that "seminar callers" are able to make the "point" that the US approves the same thing they claimed was torture when others did it, which is, of course, untrue. What saddens me is that most journalists, radio hosts and others are unlearned of the actual history and let the argument go on unchallenged.