We got war crimes convictions in 1947 against Japanese interrogators who used it in WWII. The US military has ruled it to be illegal, and in 1968 a US soldier was courtmartialed for using it on a North Vietnamese prisoner.
It's just angels dancing on the head of a pin to argue whether waterboarding is technically torture. Of course it's torture. Read the description for yourself and ask whether you'd answer any differently than AG Mukusy.
On top of existing US law, the United States is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, which make it very clear that torture is prohibited. I know that Bush tries to argue that US isn't bound by any treaties he doesn't want to honor, but then remember that people used to say that the Soviet Union could never be trusted to honor their treaties. Do you really want the US to be no better than the Soviet Union?
Current Events » in reply to We'll see. The USA's courts may very rule that it is torture.
They already have
The whole thread (21 posts)
- captured spys...
- sliding down that slippery slope
- the chinese already do much more than waterboarding to spys.
- Lots of people have defined it as torture
- re: the chinese already do much more than waterboarding to spys.
- "nobody has yet to definitively define waterboarding as torture"
- rDid the gestopo use waterboarding? I would have thought that they had other "tools" at their disposal.
- Not-as-bad-as-Hitler?
- Yes. They called it the "u-boat" technique. (n/t)
- And lets not forget that we abhored it when the japanese used it. (n/t)
- We'll see. The USA's courts may very rule that it is torture.
- rDid the gestopo use waterboarding? I would have thought that they had other "tools" at their disposal.
- Tell that to the WW2 Japanese tried and convicted for it. (n/t)
- the chinese already do much more than waterboarding to spys.
- sliding down that slippery slope