Keith Olbermann made a comment on the night of the 5th of November
Apparently a DoJ lawyer conducted an experiment...
Apparently an acting assistant attorney general, Daniel Levin, decided to see what "waterboarding" was like as an interrogation technique.
He concluded it was indeed torture, wrote a memo to that effect, and was fired.
Keith is rather heated about the issue, and rightly so.
Unfortunately I fell asleep, but the intertubes have it
Crooks and Liars video archive and transcript
Nothing really to add to that.
Sometime we link because it is a good thing
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What's the big deal about putting a few bad guys into "stressful" positions (assuming you know for sure they really are bad guys)? You call that torture? Waterboarding maybe is torture (we aren't sure about that yet; requires some study***), but stressful positions and a love tap or two? Give me a…
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I'm becoming more enthusiatic about Eric Holder as Attorney General. It's nice to see some clarity about waterboarding--that is, partial drowning interrogation. From Steve Benen:
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Anyone who still doesn't believe the United States has entered into pre-fascist stage should wake up. One major terrorist attack, and here we go... not instantly, but gradually, inch by inch the (more or less) democratic system is being dismantled. Unless the current or future government seriously screw up and wake up people into resistance, people won't notice anything until it's too late. You know, it's always safer to shut up and do what is told than to risk personal career, expulsion from school, physical safety or whatever.
It's really weird how keenly torturing of terrorist suspects is defended. It is well known among the experts that it doesn't work. Sure, you can get people to talk, but there is no way to confirm the acquired information is reliable. Prolonged torture only produces fruitcakes whose intelligence value is zero. These facts mean that the use of torture even in the so-called "ticking bomb" scenarios cannot be justified. Not to mention moral issues and how being seen as a vicious torturer affects the so-called war against terrorism.
However, torture has been used everywhere since times immemorial so it has to be useful somehow. And yeah, it is if you want to intimidate and, well, terrorize your own populace or the ones you occupy into submission.
On NPR this morning, someone mentioned that at one time the US treated waterboarding (or its equivalent) as a war crime, and prosecuted it accordingly.
Anybody have a reference for that?
The US specifically?
Number of Japanese were prosecuted and convicted for waterboarding POWs in WWII,
and I believe a US officer was prosecuted and convicted under the UCMJ in the Vietnam war (http://hrw.org/pub/2006/washingtonpost012168.pdf)
Some references: http://humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2006/10/26/usdom14465.htm
US Major Edwin Glenn was prosecuted under UCMJ in 1901 for waterboarding prisoners in the Phillippines
The "tormenta de toca" - classy.