The next American POW - why does Cheney advocate waterboarding our own troops?

Any practice that is legal and effective by the Government of the United States must also be considered legal and effective in use by other states against POWs from the United States Armed Forces.

It will happen. It might be a young man from Iowa or a young woman from North Carolina.



They will have been seperated from their fellow troops and blind folded.


They will be taken to an underground facility that is dimly lit. They will feel a raising level of terror. They will be roughly pushed down on a board with their heads at the lower end of an incline. A damp cloth will cover their face and water will begin to flow into the nose and mouth and the brain will trigger the panic mechanism that the flow of oxygen has been cut off and that your life is about to end. No water will actually flow into your lungs but your mind doesn't know that, it has been tricked into thinking that you are in the final stage of a life ending event.

The American POW has begun the terror of dying.

They will be brought upright and their mouth and nose cleared and then put back down and the terror repeated, again and again.

They will suffer from the terror the rest of their life.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6

It will be done and the US Government will not have any legal objection;




Beyond the moral question and beyond the efficacy question is the legal precedent question. The reasons that soveriegn countries signed the Geneva Protocols against torture is not because of their morality or effectiveness but because of narrow self interest; they didn't want it used against their own troops.

When Cheney continues to gin up the case for waterboarding as being effective and legal he is laying the ground work that it can also be done against American troops. If it is legal and effective for us it is legal and effective against us. This is the point that the media has not raised. It is a point that even the far right should be able to grasp. Even Fox News should be able to understand this basic point.

Why does former VP Cheney continue to advocate for the use of waterboarding against our own troops?

much weight in determining whether our adversaries engage in the same tactics. The fact is, most nations and groups that America might find itself at war with are nations and groups that do not care much for global opinion. That is why American military personnel whose duties would place them at high risk of capture are waterboarded as part of their SERE training--to teach them though first-hand knowledge that waterboarding is reasonably physically safe, and thus to strip the waterboard of the terror of drowning that makes it torture. We have done so for decades, because we are aware that our rules of engagement and our protections for prisoners aren't necessarily those of our enemies.

undercut any attempt to eliminate the practice.


While the current conflict with AQ fits your description it does not hold to a conflict with other states, like Iran, for example.


In any case the reason that the US and other countries accepted the Geneva Protocols was not due to an elevated sense of moral development but because of narrow self interest.


Whether or not the immediate future holds for a likely episode or not, the question should be put to Cheney and other apologists;

If the practice is both legal and effective would he have any objection to its use against our own troops?

I highly doubt the Iranians would limit their behaviors to those for which there is an American legal precedent, just as we would not use Iranian legal precedent to determine in what actions we engage. If an Iranian officer were to have a captured American, and if he were to want to interrogate that prisoner, I don't think he would say, "Hmm, let us look up what the officials of the American Presidency ending in January 2009 have said regarding waterboarding. From that and that alone we will decide how to proceed."

The Geneva Protocols are indeed adhered to out of self interest. Such is the case for most treaties and obligations as a member of the international community. However, the United States is unlikely to fight any country that respects all such obligations except for whichever obligations several officials of a former President claim the United States need not follow. I doubt such a country exists.

I'll admit the question is a good rhetorical one, and useful for exposing the intellectually incoherent American exceptionalism Cheney displays.

I don't get this. Have you ever actually tried to breathe through a wet towel?

spell edit

personnel that it is physically safe by exposing them to the practice of trying to breath through a wet towel.


The reason that waterboarding has become such a popular and enduring means of torture is because that it leaves no scars and is physically safe while inflicting maximum terror.

I'm just saying. Practice all you want, it's impossible.

83 times.

believes it is drowning.


In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth… During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths… The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout… You have… informed us that it is likely that this procedure would not last more than twenty minutes in any one application." <22>

Dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, the technique has been favored because, unlike most other torture techniques, it produces no marks on the body.<23> CIA officers who have subjected themselves to the technique have lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in.<15>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

trained professionals who are aware of the fact that they are effectively preventing the subject from freely breathing. The military spends millions of dollars training soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They are not going to waste their investment on a training exercise.

He is a disgusting piece of excrement. He is an evil person.

he's from the might makes right school, of course.

but saving his own ass. Didn't they start the Torture to try and extract a connection between Iraq and Al Qaida?

I think he really believes we should torture or whatever the fuck else we (ahem...THEY) want and even more so in the Unitary Executive. The dude is obsessed with the President is God Emperor stuff.

He's not trying to save his own ass, he's hanging it way out in the breeze, in my opinion.
He's all but demanding prosecution on national TV...constantly. He just actually believes crazy and evil things. Also, the money is good. There aren't any broke Sith Lords.

Dick has been in the midst of most of the wicked shit that has gone down in the last 40 years or so.
He's a true believer and an orchestrator. Cheney is a chickenhawk and keep his ass covered but that's not his motivation. He is trying to get people to buy his shit so that they can somehow keep doing what they always have-wicked acts and plundering the whole of the Earth. He's pretty afraid for his whole malevolent way of life and willing to sacrifice himself to maintain it.

He'd take the needle to get a couple more terms to allow them to work the fascism to it's full conclusion. He's given his whole life to it already.

Personally I believe that he is terrified that he is going to have to 'lawyer up' and spend the rest of his days in depostion hell and maybe even get sentenced to lock up.




The man is, as you point out, a coward.