Obama Bans Waterboarding Terrorists, But Pentagon Won't Say If It Still Waterboards Military Trainees
"Although President Obama has prohibited the use of waterboarding in interrogating captured al Qaeda terrorists, the Defense Department will not say whether it has stopped using waterboarding in its training of certain U.S. military personnel, as was discussed in a 2002 government memo made public last week. CNSNews.com April 22, 2009"You might have seen a letter circulating around the Internet--it details the "torture" that our own U.S. Navy Survival Evasion and Resistance Escape (SERE) used to train pilots--this one during the Carter years. It has gone "viral" I'm sure, so if you haven't seen it yet in your e-mail, just google it. It's pretty gruesome and goes way beyond waterboarding. The DoD memo stated, "that waterboarding had a “near 100 percent” effectiveness rate in extracting information from [our Navy] trainees, while no soldiers were harmed physically or psychologically by it."
The retired pilot suggests that if there are any charges brought against the Bush administration officials, then there should be a class action suit against all those presidents in office, including Carter and Clinton, whose administrations participated in torturing our Navy pilots.
He also asks why John McCain, who is against torture, supported SERE.
Good point. HT Howard.
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2 comments:
If history teaches us anything, it is that most humans will eventually say whatever they have to, no matter what, to stop pain.
Torture works. It can be relied on for everything the torturer wants.
Except truth.
It should be obvious to everyone, that a person goes into a military training program with the realistic expectation that the training methods used by their own government aren't designed to result in the death or injury of the service member. Trying to kill or maim your own trainees would, it seems to me, be counter-productive. While history has shown that being subjected to these same methods by an enemy doesn't quite carry the same guarantees.
As a personal example; I'm a Vietnam era Marine and at various times we were subjected to gas chamber exercises. The kind of unpleasant experience that one doesn't exactly look forward to. Yet one that I always went into confident I was going to survive intact. But, let's say it been the North Vietnamese, our foe at the time, and not the USMC sending me to a gas chamber. I'm certain I would have been just a tad more concerned about my well-being. It's disingenuous or naive for anyone to argue otherwise and pretend that these two situations are comparable.
Leave out the context and you end up with an argument, this time in the form of a letter, made solely to promote a political agenda.
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