Waterboarding, Just water boarding

[Cavguy]

Saw this thought on a political blog today, and felt it had some relevance here without getting into political banter...

With McCain likely to become the Republican nominee versus either Clinton or Obama .... all the remaining canidates are on the record opposing against the use of waterboarding or torture techniques as a policy by the USA, and I believe (not absolutely sure about McCain) most support closing Guantanamo.

So in effect, waterboarding ceases in Jan 2009, and Gitmo likely closes not long after.

Interesting development.

[Ken White]

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.'

[davidbfpo]

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

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:

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).

[bourbon]

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 has been covered fully elsewhere.

Jose Rodriguez came out with a book the other week, and has been making the usual media rounds. Elements on both sides of the political aisle are also trying to play the bin Laden operation card; ergo the torture-intelligence issue is being rehashed.

[davidbfpo]

The ever curious intersection of public policy (intelligence gathering for example) and commerce in the book launch mode.

Reviewing the thread I found a post by Tom Odom, which puts the debate in a different setting:

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?