Kiriakou and the Kite Runner

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• Reader Comments (4)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  “although he thinks waterboarding Zubaydah “probably saved lives,” he is now convinced the technique is a form of torture and that “Americans are better than that.” “

  Apparently there are a few people that are still alive who might be glad that Americans were NOT better than that. Perhaps under some circumstances, inflicting discomfort and extreme fear might be worth it. Especially on the likes of someone like Zubaydah.

  Posted by wolf on Dec 13, 2007 at 8:47 PM

  Here’s a brief history lesson.

  1947: The U.S. charge a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk. He received 15 years of hard labor as a punishment.

  1963: A CIA interrogation training manual declassified 12 years ago, “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation—July 1963,” outlined a procedure similar to waterboarding. Subjects were suspended in tanks of water wearing blackout masks that allowed for breathing. Within hours, the subjects felt tension and so-called environmental anxiety. “Providing relief for growing discomfort, the questioner assumes a benevolent role,” the manual states.

  The KUBARK manual was the product of more than a decade of research and testing, refining lessons learned from the Korean War, where U.S. airmen were subjected to a new type of “touchless torture” until they confessed to a bogus plan to use biological weapons against the North Koreans.

  1968: The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced “a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.”

  The article said the practice was “fairly common” in part because “those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury.”
  _______________________________________________________

  I think that should be all the evidence you need to realize that waterboarding is not only torture, but it’s also incredibly ineffective.

  For God’s sake, we called it torture and punished accordingly in 1947, in 1963 our own POW’s gave bogus confessions when it was used on them, and then we proceeded to use it fairly regularly in Vietnam.

  If your motivation is to receive threats that wind up being completely bogus, like the ones Zubaydah gave concerning shopping malls, nuclear power plants, supermarkets, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and about al-Qaida plans to build a nuclear device, then go ahead and waterboard until the well runs dry, but if you’re actually concerned with protecting our country, next time you’re interrogating a supposed high level operative, it might be better to actually check his financial records and his relationships with Saudi princes and Pakistani Air Force Chiefs and not allow the Saudis and Pakistan to conduct their own investigations.

  I await your response and justification.

  Posted by johnmarge on Dec 14, 2007 at 6:30 AM

  I totally agree with the comment of “johnmarge.”

  Posted by frank67 on Dec 19, 2007 at 3:53 PM

  Thanks. Too bad more people aren’t participating in this exchange, and too bad so few Americans are even aware of these atrocities.

  Posted by johnmarge on Dec 19, 2007 at 8:01 PM

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