No, it's not an ad hominem. It is a personal attack, but it's not an ad hominem (they are not the same thing).
Crazed, if it is all about effectiveness why do we tie our hands and not do what you would consider real torture? If someone is plotting a real attack against the US, aren't some pulled fingernails fairly minor?
It's just cute that tough guys like a pediatric neurosurgeon, a failed tech CEO, the former governor of the worst state in the country, and now you all think that waterboarding is A-ok because it's become another ideological conservative fact-less feel-good way of thinking that it yields results.
And most Democrats are doing exactly as you suggest......except they have nominated a charlatan(a person who pretends or claims to have more knowledge or skill than he or she possesses; quack) and will vote for her.
My post above could have been to you too.
How's the job going?
How about this, They quit cutting off people's Heads and we quit water boarding. Sound like a fair trade?
Then why your fully disingenuous mischaracterization of it as "pour[ing] water over their head"
Not easy to catch you in a lie, Crazed, but not impossible.
I was waiting for your dodge. How are you going to conflate the meanings of over and into?
And just why do you think that might be? Wouldn't he have to admit that he had egg on his face?
Without knowing the full scheme of interrogation, we'll never know what correlation and causation were in that nugget of information from KSM. Was it the humiliation via nudity, the dogs, the waterboarding, etc. We don't know. You can't throw 72 things against a wall and then when one of them comes under fire say "but that's the one that did it!"
To be fair about it that's not how it was done by our guys and I know because I've seen a demonstration and briefing on what we did and some of the information we got from it. They inclined the person so his head was lower than his feet than they put a cloth over the mouth and nose of the person and poured the water over the head of that person for some approved period of time. That prevents almost all of the water from really going into the mouth or nose of the person but still gives the person the impression of drowning. They could suffocate if it was done for too long of a time but they controlled that. They got some false information from the people they water boarded but they also get false information from regular interrogations. They also got some accurate information from the few people they water boarded too. The people briefing us listed some terrorists that we captured or killed as a result of information they got from water boarding plus information they got by other methods and means too. I still don't support it except maybe in an extreme circumstance like they call the ticking bomb scenario but when is that likely to happen? I'm convinced it works sometimes but we can probably eventually get the same information in other ways but even if we can't it's torture and we shouldn't do it. I think it could be prosecuted as a war crime too. I think we should take the high road and not do it.
Well they should stop burning people alive and drowning them in steel cages. They should stop the rapes and the slave trade in young girls. Then MAYBE we'd not waterboard 3 people. OR maybe the complainers about "torture" will object to one beheading, one drowning, one burning, one rape or one slave sold. Maybe. I haven't ever noticed one word here in opposition to those horrors - maybe I missed such posts - but threads on waterboarding go on for days.
In world wide jihad against people attempting to impose Sharia'a Law on every nation possible by any means imaginable, please advise where the moral higher ground is - in appeasement? In losing nicely? In the deaths of Americans and citizens of our allies while we watch comfortably from the moral high ground? What is the value of the moral high ground to those - civilian and military - who are being killed by fanatics pursuing world dominance through the perversion of their religion using Sharia'a Law?
Is my recollection wrong that it was CIA contractors -- not actual CIA personnel -- that did the waterboarding? (Not that it really makes a difference, other than it might be indicative of the problems inherent in privatizing warfare.)
It doesn't matter. They were acting as agents (legal term - not James Bond term) of CIA in doing so. And my recollection is that a few folks were brought in to "oversee" the program. Who actually executed it is unbeknownst.
I understand it doesn't practically, but from a legalistic "chain of responsibility" sense, it does add a wrinkle. The use of contract mercenaries overall has been troubling to me from the outset.
It's quite common for them to use contractors for non-core activities. My hypothesis is that they're constrained by the GS scale and some of these contractors probably make more than top CIA employees.
Actually I think waterboarding very clearly fits that definition, specifically under 2(C).
(
Remember my post from earlier today wondering why it is some people freak out by the prospect of an elephant being killed by a hunter, but don't bat an eye when hunters kill a deer or some other animal? I likened it to the contrast between being a prostitute and being a porn performer. Just stick a camera in the room and I guess it becomes legal, boys.
What you're suggesting here falls in the same category. Nobody seems to have the slightest problem with us blowing enemy combatants to bits. But to pour water over their head in a totally controlled and safe environment? Quelle horreur!!!
Don't kid yourself about this, Goat. We've done this before and chances are probably pretty good that we'll eventually do it again. If you have moral qualms about that, then knock yourself out.
