is water boarding torcher?

[ginodacampoismydh]

what do you all think?

ill check on thread later tomorrow but i just wondered what others thought after mixed reactions on question time im [shocked]

MrsCrafty, I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to your nonsense, but you have enraged me.
Your ludicrous "We should be bloody grateful that there are people out there that are able to torture someone (I certainly couldn't) to make sure you are safe" is probably the single most offensive thing to ever have been posted on Mumsnet, but is just so laughably stupid, (as are all your views on this topic, a topic which you are happy to profess you know nothing about) that I can only assume you are taking the piss.

or completely pissed?

Or a figment of my (somewhat stressed and tired) imagination.

I would like to respond to MrsCrafty's earlier post where she 'imagined that scene' with the general etc...

I can imagine this scene:

A week after a terrorist attack, the actual person who planned the attack posts a video online of themselves planting the bomb, and does a gloating voiceover.

An enraged general calls intelligenc men into his office and demands to kno how this can be when a prisoner taken shortly after the attack has already confessed to planting the bomb themselves...

General : "Have you seen this..."

Man: "errrrr...WTF??"
General: "Only yesterday you assured me you had the bomber secured in a cell in the prison compund"
Man: "But, xxxxx confessed to having planted the bomb himself..."
General : "oh, yes, and when did this confession happen then?"
Man: "Well, we waterboarded him, and after 30 seconds, he confessed to it..."

Torture will never produce any more accurate results than other intelligence methods. Also as Christopher Hitchens points out in his fantastic article in Vanity Fair, one of the core beliefs of terrorists is that things like 9/11 don't matter because the end justifies the means, however many people die. Bush just shows himself to pretty much act and think as a terrorist when he condones waterboarding, as that also is apparently justified by the end, and the means don't matter.

And if one day an American citizen captured abroad is waterboarded by terrorists, I am sure Bush will suddenly condemn these evil terrrists for despicably torturing this poor person... cough, hypocrite, cough. If you are going to waterboard people then how dare you complain if they do the same back to your people. You then cannot complain about it, you have already brought yourself down to the terrorists level.

josie he represents the americans in a very poor light, i have conections with friends in america and they all hate him. He is one of a kind i think he is carrying on his fathers grudge that he never finished the job in the first place and niether has he that is why he is harping on. He is a campaigner for the death penalty says so much!!!

A friend of ours from US was over last week. He is ashamed and embarrassed by the Bushman. Whenever the subject of politics comes up in his presencer the poor guy felt he had to apologise to us (us, the Brits) for those who voted Bush in. I point out to him that we are responsible for Blair.

I decided to speak to a pal today about this as I was sure that I hadn't got it wrong. He informed me that when you are doing it for a valid reason, yes it's a very powerful tool and yes, he felt it was right. He went on to tell me all about the interrogation training he recieved which although wasn't waterboarding, it was harsh.

Couldn't get hold of too many people as most are on active service but two out of a few reassured me that I am not ignorant or wrong. So I still say, yes, waterboarding is torture and if it saves more than one life, I agree with it. Thankfully I don't have to carry out these procedures as I think I would baulk at having to do it. But I am really really proud of our forces.

But of course, it's easy to watch from an armchair and cry that it's wrong, morally reprehensible and NIMBY. I can't help the way I feel and that's that.

Oh and to be really realistic I doubt many people who have been tortured actually came back to tell us that it didn't work.

I don't see it as respectful of soldiers to assume they are all torturers.

And I am not saying that. I am saying that it happens, has always happened and everyone would be niaive to imagine that some intelligence is formed by giving 'tea & cupcakes'. Us, the public are never ever going to know. I am in my 40's and the people I know in the forces are not squaddies. Although I know some. Once again, I am really really proud of our forces.

MrsCrafty, if your 'pal' exists, and if he exists and wasn't just spinning you a line and if you are reporting those comments accurately - you've just outed him as a war criminal. Torture is indeed illegal under national and international law. Am surprised anyone doesn't know this but you seem rather ill-informed on most points, thought I'd better mention it.

I'm sure your 'pal' will be chuffed that you've exposed him and his mates to the risk of prosecution in the UK or international courts.

How hard can it be to understand that if you torture someone, they will tell you anything you want to hear - whether it is true or not? Fat lot of ruddy use, basically.

Btw, since you seem to struggle to read and absorb information, I'll just repeat the points made so eloquently by Badgers:

Torture does not produce reliable intelligence.

Torture produces a flood of unreliable intelligence.

Torture causes further terrorist attacks.

Torture will prolong any war against insurgents.

I am really really proud of them too Mrs Crafty. In fact I will say 'really' a few more times if that would help. But I don't see why you are, if you think they torture people. What's to stop them torturing you? Or your child? Or your brother? I think it's naive to think that torture is any more than a short-term gain, if any. Yes, I believe that torture could lead to e.g. an arrest, or the discovery of a plot. But being part of a society that tortures means that we will need a lot more arrests and will have a lot more plots against us. Grown up common sense IMO.

Edam & maktaitai have said it all, I think.

Oh yes - NIMBY means "not in my back yard", MrsCrafty. Usually used of people who don't want their local area ruined by e.g. a new rubbish dump. I fail to see how that belongs in your trail of insulting drivel.

Although, for the record, I don't want people to be tortured in my back yard. But then, I don't want them tortured in their own back yards, or in Fidel Castro's back yard either.

Great post Edam.

I stand by the assertion that MrsC is a wind-up. Surely no-one is this ridiculous?

"I decided to speak to a pal today about this as I was sure that I hadn't got it wrong. He informed me that when you are doing it for a valid reason, yes it's a very powerful tool and yes, he felt it was right."
Right... and you think we should take the word of your 'pal' as gospel, should we? Will you name him, perhaps, and we can ask him ourselves? Thought not. (See Edam's post).

Of course I am not going to give you the names of individuals. I doubt very much they would want to be named on a thread whereby they have to redeem themselves to a bunch of women who have no idea what they are talking about for one. Me included.

I will shut up now as when I mentioned NIMBY, I mean it's very easy for you all to get excited and moralistic when you are not the one doing it.

Edam, I expect that my 'pal' will be quaking in his shoes when he reads this, although he would never read this and would wonder why on earth I have bothered entering the discussion.

Your very haughty tones and the way you all envisualise yourselves as being terribly academic, informed and absolutely right are excellent. As you were ladies. Lol.

Mrs Crafty, I am not an academic but I have read many Amnesty International reports about individual countries who routinely torture people I challenge you to read one and say "It's ok If we can get information from it and as long as I am not the one having to do it" a cowardly stance if I ever saw one.

I am pretty sure that there are other ways than tea and cupcakes but it is NOT torture!

"envisualise"

never heard that one before. Do you mean "envisage" ? or "visualise"?

as for all the weirdy cake references - what's that all about?

Oh and as for your "pal" MrsCrafty - is it Dubya? or just a little imaginary friend inside your head?

In a decent society, individuals do not shuffle off responsibility for the actions of those who represent them, simply by saying "well, I wouldn't do it, but I'm glad someone else does". You have to assume that there may come a time where you will have to fulfill any role for the good of the society in which you live. If you cannot, or will not, perform an action yourself, then morally you cannot condone others doing it on your behalf.

josie14 wrote "I lived for a short while in America and, like most places, its full of interesting and welcoming people."

Out of interest was that before or after 2001-09-11 ? I visited the USA several times before 2000 and found most people welcoming, and while I'd like to go back to visit friends, the degree of paranoia (sometimes justified) that is changing air travel from abroad (but not inside the USA) is holding me back, somewhat.

"Part of George Bush's legacy is to hold his people up of bigoted, ass kicking folk - which they are not."

"up of" or "up as" ? U assume the latter

Back in 2002 a friend in Boston who is and was vehemently against the activities of the forces said that you'd be lucky not to be strung up if you spoke out against what Bush was doing at that time. They were very much wanting to be the "ass kicking" type ("let's get our forces over there and show them") and the media was full of it.

To speak out against it would have been deemed un-American as if someone was a Commie sympathiser in earlier years!

Yes, I am an old girl. It was before 2001.

Bush's excuse was that the lawyers told him it wasn't torture and he's not a lawyer.

Someone on the news quiz has just pointed out actually the fucking liar has a law degree...

(Thank you Elephants and Loopy, btw, v. kind of you.)

Jux - I agree wholeheartedly with your last point. That is one of my arguments against capital punishment. If you are not prepared to kill or maim people yourself then do not expect pthers to do it on your behalf.

What I cannot for the life of me understand it:

if I am happy for somebody else to be tortured for me to be safe (assuming that such a thing is at all plausible) why do I deserve to be safe more than that other person? Why would keeping me safe be a priority if that is the kind of person I am?

Stalin thought he could only be safe by murdering all his political opponents- or potential politicial opponents. Isn't that precisely why the rest of us think Stalin is better off dead?

Yes, I believe it is torture. The question on QT was about obtaining info from other agencies that may have been given via torture.

Of course any country would act on the info however it was obtained. Obviously if any govt gets info from another country that clearly leads to a huge security issue they will act on it even if they believe the info was given after torture. It's info obtained after the fact (the fact being torture).Once the intelligence is out there, it's out there.

For me the difficulty is whether acting on the info (and the info being right) gives some sort of authority to the agency to continue with torture. That worries me greatly.

Maccrafty - the non bigoted twat guy - yes that very clever and charming expert on Afghanistan said that torture was wrong as it didn't work and he stated that waterboarding was torture.

I'd take his word for it.