Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on their back with the head inclined downward

(the Trendelenburg position), and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation

and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent. In contrast

to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex. Waterboarding will almost

always cause lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation,

injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of

waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.

Waterboarding was used for interrogation at least as early as the Spanish Inquisition to obtain information, coerce confessions,

punish, and intimidate. It is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts, politicians,

war veterans, intelligence officials, military judges, and human rights organizations. In 2007 waterboarding

led to a political scandal in the United States when the press reported that the CIA had waterboarded extrajudicial prisoners

and that the Justice Department had authorized this procedure. The CIA has admitted waterboarding Al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh

Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Over the weekend President Bush vetoed a bill that would have banned the CIA from using “waterboarding” and other coercive ...

We can easily get information by hypnosis and sodium penathol. People who torture want any excuse to torture and there are better ways to get it.

Waterboarding is TORTURE! It should never be allowed. I cannot imagine that any information elicited by this inhumane method could be credible anyway! I am not only deeply ashamed of my president but utterly astounded that he would even think for a minute about allowing this. It is so disgusting! He takes the high moral tone all the time, but he is so hypocritical. I apologize to the rest of the world for this man. I never voted for him!

YouTube - John McCain on Waterboarding
waterboarding what a joke. you want to really make them ...

Watch video - 42 sec -






www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIHHZ59aWoA

YouTube - Bush on Waterboarding !
Ok, we've all heard by now about freedom & safety...but this ...

Watch video - 1 min 55 sec -






www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EXTWBy91g

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks that took over 3,000 lives. He is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63 (the shoe bomber), the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl. Pearl, you will remember, had his beheading videotaped by mohammed, who was chanting 'praise to allah' in the background.

Are you seriously worried about this guys civil liberties? If waterboarding saves one life because of confessions from animals like this it is worth it. It's a technique that has now been rendered useless by the liberal media because future captured terrorists know they will not die from it. This type of political correctness will get us all killed or subjugated in time, it's already happening in parts of Europe.

“The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself”
Friedrich Nietzsche

I think as a country the United States must be very careful not to become the monsters it rails against. Waterboarding and torture have historically produced uneven and unreliable information. Some may be good. Most will not be. (And doesn't that psychologically makes sense? Anything to stop the pain.)

I've always found the "one-man-must-suffer-for-millions-to-live" to be a slippery slope paved with good intentions (to mix my metaphors.) I mean, wasn't this the political reason Christ was crucified?

One more quote by a founding father:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

It sounds like your comparing the persecution of Jesus to the waterboarding of Khalid Muhammad, that's the worst kind of moral equivalence I've come across in a while. As far as Nietzsche is concerned, if you don't fight the 'dragon' that we are facing today, we will end up dead or subjugated - these goals are clearly stated in the Koran and used by extremists. Ben Franklin was speaking of citizens of a country, not enemy combatants who want to destroy that country's very existence. To get into what the founding fathers thought is the slippery slope, as they would be appalled at what the US has now become, which is a country full of citizens who look to the state for all the answers. The US was founded by a bunch of 'Bible thumping right wing nuts,' or at least that is how they would be classified on MSNBC today. The founding father's saw and went into detail on the dangers of democracy (another debate).

Another thing that I am stumped by is the fact that people who feel it is wrong to waterboard terrorists like mohammad also think the Iraq war is wrong. Why do people care so much about the sheik's civil liberties, but yet have no regard for the tens of thousands of people maimed, gassed, and tortured by Saddam.

"It sounds like your comparing the persecution of Jesus to the waterboarding of Khalid Muhammad, that's the worst kind of moral equivalence I've come across in a while. "

I'm not comparing the individuals, but I am comparing the politics that motivated leaders to believe sacrificing Jesus would alleviate the threat of Roman retaliation, and the politics that motivate leaders to think that torturing another will alleviate the threat of terrorists. Slight, but important, difference.

Here's my simple moral equation: if we say violence against us as a society is wrong, how do we justify inflicting it upon another? If I employ violence, how can I say I am better than those who use it against me?

We simply should never allow ourselves to sink to the level of these barbarians. We have condemned waterboarding by other countries - how can we justify it here. It is quite simply WRONG. There is no justification whatsoever for this procedure. There is no way we are getting true confessions by inflicting this on anyone anyway. Of course they will confess to ANYTHING to stop this torture. The United States has always prided itself on being humanitarian. This procedure is despicable!

"Here's my simple moral equation: if we say violence against us as a society is wrong, how do we justify inflicting it upon another? If I employ violence, how can I say I am better than those who use it against me?"


You won't have to say you are better, you will either be dead or living under sharia law - that is the stated goal of Sheik and groups like Al-Qaeda. It still seems as if a large % of the population thinks these people are bluffing.

The United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s countries. The average American could probably not locate half of these 135 countries on a map.

The U. S. global empire – an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George V would be proud of.

The kingdom of Alexander the Great reached all the way to the borders of India. The Roman Empire controlled the Celtic regions of Northern Europe and all of the Hellenized states that bordered the Mediterranean. The Mongol Empire, which was the largest contiguous empire in history, stretched from Southeast Asia to Europe. The Byzantine Empire spanned the years 395 to 1453. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary in the northwest; and from Egypt in the south to the Caucasus in the north. At the height of its dominion, the British Empire included almost a quarter of the world’s population.

Nothing, however, compares to the U.S. global empire. What makes U.S. hegemony unique is that it consists, not of control over great land masses or population centers, but of a global presence unlike that of any other country in history.

The extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. The latest "Base Structure Report" of the Department of Defense states that the Department’s physical assets consist of "more than 600,000 individual buildings and structures, at more than 6,000 locations, on more than 30 million acres." The exact number of locations is then given as 6,702 – divided into large installations (115), medium installations (115), and small installations/locations (6,472). This classification can be deceiving, however, because installations are only classified as small if they have a Plant Replacement Value (PRV) of less than $800 million.

Although most of these locations are in the continental United States, 96 of them are in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 of them are in foreign countries. But as Chalmers Johnson has documented, the figure of 702 foreign military installations is too low, for it does not include installations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Johnson estimates that an honest count would be closer to 1,000.

The number of countries that the United States has a presence in is staggering. According the U.S. Department of State’s list of "Independent States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world, all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic relations with the United States. All of these countries except one (Vatican City) are members of the United Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication, "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," the United States has troops in 135 countries. Here is the list:

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Antigua
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo
Costa Rica
Cote D’lvoire
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Liberia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Mali
Malta
Mexico
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia and Montenegro
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

This means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s countries. The average American could probably not locate half of these 135 countries on a map.

To this list could be added regions like the Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia, Gibraltar, and the Atlantic Ocean island of St. Helena, all still controlled by Great Britain, but not considered sovereign countries. Greenland is also home to U.S. troops, but is technically part of Denmark. Troops in two other regions, Kosovo and Hong Kong, might also be included here, but the DOD’s "Personnel Strengths" document includes U.S. troops in Kosovo under Serbia and U.S. troops in Hong Kong under China.

Possessions of the United States like Guam, Johnston Atoll, Puerto Rico, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and the Virgin Islands are likewise home to U.S. troops. Guam has over 3,200.

Regular troop strength ranges from a low of 1 in Malawi to a high of 74,796 in Germany. At the time the most recent "Personnel Strengths" was released by the government (September 30, 2003), there were 183,002 troops deployed to Iraq, an unspecified number of which came from U.S. forces in Germany and Italy. The total number of troops deployed abroad as of that date was 252,764, not including U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States. Total military personnel on September 30, 2003, was 1,434,377. This means that 17.6 percent of U.S. military forces were deployed on foreign soil, and certainly over 25 percent if U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States were included. But regardless of how many troops we have in each country, having troops in 135 countries is 135 countries too many.

I don't believe for a second that they are bluffing. They firmly believe that God is on THEIR side. They are extremely dangerous. I just do not believe that waterboarding possible suspects is either morally defensible OR advantageous at all. Who would not give any information that they thought the torturers would want and expect just in order to stop the torture?