Apparently "waterboarding" saved London from a terrorist attack according to The Mail.

[TheJollyPirate]

Now correct me if I am wrong but surely if you are being tortured you will eventually say whatever your torturers want to hear - even if it isn't true. .

I don't know if The Mail have their facts right or wrong with regard to the possibility of a terrorist attack but I do know that under torture people will crack and possibly implicate themselves in anything - regardless of whether or not it is true.

Torture can never be justified.

I am appalled that anyone could say that it is not torture. In a civilized society the end does not justify the means. Apart from the humanitarian side- people will say whatever the torturer wants them to say-it doesn't necessarily have to be true.

"under certain circumstances I would do it and probably be grateful to those who do if i found out that a terror attack had been averted which would probably have killed me and my children."

But what about the fact that the West torturing people will make terror attacks more likely and thus increase the chances of your children being killed?

What if your children were killed in one of the terrorist attacks committed by someone who now believed Al Qaeda's claims that the West was evil?

What if you children were killed in one of the terrorist attacks committed by someone who thought "well the US is saying that the ends justify the means, so that is how they view the world and I am therefore justified by the way they behave to do what I am about to do"?

What if your children were killed in an attack that could have been prevented but the security services were snowed under with "confessions" extracted under torture that were complete nonsense and said just to stop the pain?

What about if your children were the ones tortured and some other parent then said to you "well the ends justify the means"?

This isn't just some abstract moral debate, for these very good and practical reasons torture by the state is something that needs to be stopped immediately.

Perfectly put, BP.

I was unhappy when this was on the news yesterday and the vt they showed alongside it was a person/man, blindfolded and lying down, and water being poured on him from a height - BUT it was being poured on his eyes and forehead, not his mouth. Obviously they weren't going to actually torture someone and show it, but what was the point? Some people will have seen that vt and will actually think "oh it doesn't look that tortuous to me". It was also reported as being "simulated drowning" - what the hell kind of whitewash journalese is that? Simulated? It is actual "drowning" - nothing simulated about it.

There was that journalist - was it AA Gill or someone? - who for research purposes volunteered to see what it was like, and within a split second of the water pouring on the cloth over his mouth, was hammering the "safety" stop code and fighting in total panic to get off the bench.

On the one hand GB thinks the end justify the means.

On the other hand it was right to fight Saddam Hussein because he was evil.

A fine case of wanting to have his cake and eat it.

If our society is to be worth defending, then it's got to be a society worth defending.

"It was also reported as being "simulated drowning" - what the hell kind of whitewash journalese is that? Simulated? It is actual "drowning" - nothing simulated about it."

Simulated drowning is actually a very good description of what waterboarding is, it is most definitely not actual drowning.

It's about kicking off a number of the bodies natural reflexes that would happen if you were drowning without actually drowning them.

From the torturers point of view this is great. The subject feels like they're drowning and has all the associated natural reflexes and is subject to the sheer terror of that. However they are not actually drowning, so you can keep on doing it, and doing it, and doing it.

It's a horrible thing to do.

Ah, okay, BP - honest thanks for putting me right. I thought that actually you could end up ultimately dead, or suffering the physical and medical symptoms of partial drowning (water in the lungs etc), and so it wasn't "pretend" or "simulated", but fairly real.

Still horrific though, whatever.

"I thought that actually you could end up ultimately dead, or suffering the physical and medical symptoms of partial drowning"

You can die.

The "simulation" of drowning in waterboarding isn't just psychological, it's a very physical reflex reaction. So the throat can seal up, the lungs try to inflate, which creates a vacuum, which seals the throat tighter.

So even though the conscious mind might be aware that what's going on is a "trick" it can't override the bodies natural instincts.

Imagine it, you know you're not drowning but you're body just won't stop and you can't control it.

The "simulation" aspect of this doesn't downplay what's being done, it's the simulation that let's it become a real and horrific form of torture, well unless you're a representative of the US Government in which case it's not torture, oh no, honest, fingers crossed and everything!

Excellently put cory.

So was Iraq invaded because of evidence gained through torture? GB believed Iraq was stuffed full of WMD and a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. That all proved wrong.

The thing is:

a) torture isn't a particularly effective way of interrogating people. Quite a few interrogators have said this, eg. Matthew Alexander (former Air Force interrogator) wrote a book saying that after waterboarding and other coercive techniques were banned, the rate of cooperation by people being questioned went from 20% to 70 or 80%. Interrogation techniques that focus on building rapport are much more effective.

b) linked to the last, the information you get from torture may not be high-quality, so you waste precious time chasing false leads.

c) by using torture, you create more enemies for the future, so you raise the overall threat instead of reducing it.

d) utilitarian arguments aside, there are some acts that are so morally bad that states shouldn't be doing them. Weakening the taboo against torture does nobody any favours ultimately.

Simulated drowning only to the point where the torturer knows to stop. If he/she gets it wrong then it's an unmarked grave for somebody's innocent until proved guilty son/husband/daughter/wife.

If torture goes unchecked then it will become normal and 'justified'. Then I believe that we are far more likely to find ourselves victims or related to victims of torture than of terrorist attacks.

In my opinion we are all stained by torture carried out in our name.

"Simulated drowning only to the point where the torturer knows to stop."

Even if the torturer does take it too far it still won't stop being simulated drowning.

Death and serious injury can occur, no matter how hard the US Government try and pretend otherwise, but it will be due to causes other than drowning.

If people are going to argue and protest over this it's important to be well informed. Saying that waterboarding is basically drowning someone, which it isn't, or leads to drowning, which it won't, gives it's supporters and easy chance to dismiss us as ill informed and therefore ignorable.

"GB believed Iraq was stuffed full of WMD and a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists."

And there's one of the best examples of Government misinformation and misdirection.

Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq and the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Despite this I remember a survey some time ago that showed an alarmingly high proportion of Americans believed that the invasion of Iraq was connected with 9/11 and Al Qaeda.

It really was all about the WMDs, imagined or otherwise.

Saddam Hussein had no truck with Al Qaeda and radical Islam, he saw it as a threat to his regime and clamped down on it. Al Qaeda only became a problem in Iraq after the invasion in the chaos that followed it.

The Government(s) hinting and nudging that the invasion was connected with Al Qaeda without really coming out and saying that is just an attempt to divert attention away from the real reason being a complete fabrication/mistake (delete according to the cynicism).

So even though the WMDs weren't found it's lodged in peoples mind that the invasion was connected with the war on terror and Al Qaeda so it somehow might have been "OK".

GWB didn't believe that Iraq had WMDs. He said they did to get support for his invasion plans.

If you read his former chief anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies", Bush started cooking up plans to invade Iraq within hours of 9/11 attacks, before anyone even knew who was responsible for them.

waterboarding poses a real risk of causing wet or dry drowning. Pretending otherwise is delusional in my opinion.

Torturers bury their mistakes and pretend that their 'professional interrogation techniques' are scientific.

Thanks for all the information on here, BadgersPaws.

Torture: Not in my name. Ever. For all the reasons above.

As someone else wrote, if it's done, even as a means to an end, it becomes the norm, and the situation/problem, doesn't end or get solved in this way, it just creates similar situations.