Waterboarding was a war crime in WW2. What's changed?

[Andre]

I won't debate you. If you are going to call the Psalms sinful, then I find no desire or need to worry about what you think of me.

Please do not misrepresent me. I never said anything remotely like this.

 

[Andre]

Terror in return for terror breeds more terror.

You are right. The Christian is called to participate in putting an end to the "violence begets more violence" cycle. When a Christians accepts the necessity to waterboard, they are effectively buying into the world's way of doing business - the use of power and coercion to achieve ends. This is not the gospel way.

 

[Andre]

It's pointless to debate with a bleeding heart. If they had their way we would have no guns in our homes depending on the mighty government to protect us (yeah right). The only people who would have weapons would be the criminals.

The evidence suggests otherwise. In 2005, there were only 50 gun homicides in all the United Kingdom - about 60 milliom people, I think. If it were really true that gun control means that criminals will still get guns, you would see a much higher number than this. After all, there is a lot of crime in the UK and a criminal would be motivated to use a gun (it is an effective weapon).

 

[JustChristian]

I wont, cause it doesn't exist.

Why do you ask for the impossible?

Why even get involved in the decisions of governments and agencies and debate over something which we have no control? Show me the goverment or the agency of the government which operates on Christian principals and by what Jesus said.

Even trying to answer your statement is telling: I don't know what you mean by right to kill. Clearly there are situations where it is right to kill and situations where killing is murder.

But if your conscience tells you otherwise, then don't get involved.

A right to torture? What is that? Define it.
Excessive brutallity and violence intended to cause pain and permanant harm..... That's what I'm against. Have we done that?

I don't know a Christian who has participated or was involved in any decisions or actions.

According to John McCain's statement which I posted, yes we have done that in violation of international law.

 

[JustChristian]

Water torture techniques used during WWII are much different than waterboarding. Water torture, as cited earlier, introduced water through the nose or mouth through hoses, tubes or submersion which could cause actual drowning. In waterboarding, as practiced now, and as cited earlier, the face of the individual is covered with plastic or cloth and water is poured over the person's head. The recipient does not have water being forced into the respritory system but experiences the full sensation of drowning.

There is a fundamental difference between actually drowning and simulated drowning.

So you don't agree with McCain's statement that we have tortured prisoners acting against the Geneva convention and other international treaties? You're the expert not the Republican Senator who himself was tortured?

 

[Andre]

More baloney. David cured terrorism for several generations. Dropping a nuke on Japan cured them. You win wars by being fiercer that your enemy is willing to be.

Indeed, being "fiercer" than your enemy may indeed help win a war.

But it is certainly not a behaviour that Jesus would endorse. And dropping a nuke on Japan almost certainly did not "cure" them in the sense I think you mean.

Do you really think that the relatives of the civilians killed at Hiroshima were "cured" of any imperialist aggressiveness by this act of mass slaughter (whether justifiable or not)? I think that human history shows that violence generally begets more violence. Obviously, we all know that Japan has not undertaken a warlike stance since 1945, but that probably has little to do with the atomic bomb and more to do with other things.

Using the tools of violent power are not the way that Jesus would have us go. There may be situations where there is no choice. But it is not the gospel way to think in terms of "what will most effective at winning", it is to think in term of what is most loving.

 

[LadyEagle]

The most loving thing to do would be just to lie down and bare our throats and smile so they can saw our heads off. After all, we're going to heaven anyway.

I hate to break this to you libbies, but you can "love" somebody right into eternal hell.

This thread not only is ridiculous but borders on insane.

 

[JustChristian]

The most loving thing to do would be just to lie down and bare our throats and smile so they can saw our heads off. After all, we're going to heaven anyway.

I hate to break this to you libbies, but you can "love" somebody right into eternal hell.

This thread not only is ridiculous but borders on insane.

It borders on insane that your country has committed atrocities that we tried the Japanese for after WW2? That this was torture was confirmed by John McCain? You really don't care what we do in the name of the republican party do you?

 

[rbell]

Do you really think that the relatives of the civilians killed at Hiroshima were "cured" of any imperialist aggressiveness by this act of mass slaughter (whether justifiable or not)? I think that human history shows that violence generally begets more violence. Obviously, we all know that Japan has not undertaken a warlike stance since 1945, but that probably has little to do with the atomic bomb and more to do with other things.

Wow, this kind of shows a pretty pronounced lack of understanding of the factors behind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps a cursory review of WWII history would help.

 

[Andre]

The most loving thing to do would be just to lie down and bare our throats and smile so they can saw our heads off. After all, we're going to heaven anyway.

No one is saying that we simply "lay down". You cannot simply assume that rejection of torture invites such things. In fact, I tend to think that every time the world hears of Americans "torturing" people (whether or not waterboarding is technically torture), those looking for moral justification for acts of terror find exactly what they want.

I hate to break this to you libbies,..

It is not constructive to frame things in terms of rhetorical characterizations of groups, such as a reference to "those libbies". Intentionally or not, you are appealing to tribalism - setting up the "libbies" as a goofy, muddle-headed, or perhaps downright evil "them" that is set against an "us" that are the holders of truth.

This thread not only is ridiculous but borders on insane.

I agree, but probably for entirely different reasons.

 

[Andre]

Wow, this kind of shows a pretty pronounced lack of understanding of the factors behind the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps a cursory review of WWII history would help.

By all means, expound. Since you have this understanding (apparently) please set me (and perhaps others) straight on this matter.

 

[rbell]

By all means, expound. Since you have this understanding (apparently) please set me (and perhaps others) straight on this matter.

Well, since you seem to be unaware of the reasons Truman OK'd the bombs...you seem to think that there was another way to defeat the Japanese, that wouldn't involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US servicemen.

By all means, share the alternatives...

 

[Robert Snow]

nevermind.

 

[LadyEagle]

It borders on insane that your country has committed atrocities that we tried the Japanese for after WW2? That this was torture was confirmed by John McCain? You really don't care what we do in the name of the republican party do you?

There can be no reasonable discussion on any of this until there is at least some agreement as to what constitutes torture. You say waterboarding is torture. I say it is not. I don't give a hang what John McCain thinks, he is not a conservative and his pick for runner is why Republicans lost the election. I am neither Republican or Democrat, so your assertion about me not caring is totally false and another one of your famous jumps to conclusions of which you know nothing about.

It has already been explained to you maybe as early as page 1 about the WW2 thing. Obviously, you refuse to accept facts that disagree with your preconceived liberal notions. Perhaps you can get John McCain to come over to the Democratic side of the aisle, because as far as I am concerned, he is just another RINO like whats his face who finally came clean last week and joined Democratic ranks.


Let's get real, people. Let's talk about the REAL war crimes of WW2. Waterboarding is nothing compared to the real tortures committed.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_pacific.html

Like I said, this thread is ridiculous and borders on insanity.

 

[LadyEagle]

Again, a reality check:

During the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre, the Chinese were not simply murdered. They were tortured, humiliated, and raped. The Japanese used a wide variety of methods of murder. They chased the Chinese into the Yangtze River with machine guns, drowning them. They poured gasoline on people, and shot them, so the victims flickered up like candles. They cut the eyeballs out of men, and then burned the people while they were still living. They tied Chinese civilians up on posts, and threw grenades to watch their flesh fly. A Japanese general poured acid on a man until he died of corrosion. Some Chinese were attacked with awls. Others were castrated. Some Chinese even had their hearts cut out. Some women were beaten at the vagina with fists and other objects until they died. Even babies were victims; they were skewered and tossed into boiling water. Hakudo Nagatomi, a Japanese war veteran, described, "I remember smiling proudly as I took his [another general's] sword and began killing people...The head was cut clean off and tumbled away on the ground as the body slumped forward, blood spurting in two great gushing fountains from the neck."

Japanese soldiers laughingly made games out of these atrocities. The Japanese generals organized contests to see how many Chinese one soldier could murder in a given time. Whoever killed the most won. News reporters and visitors came to observe the competitions and raise praise for the victor back in Japan. Sometimes the number of bodies reached as high as five-hundred in a single contest. In one such contest, two officers were racing to one hundred. However, they lost count, so they continued to one hundred and fifty. A short while later, the Nichi-nichi, a Tokyo newspaper, printed the story with pride. Highly respected Japanese doctors and scientists went to China to do scientific research on unwilling Chinese victims. In many cases, the subjects were American and Russian prisoners. Tests were done without anesthesia or pain killers. The Japanese placed people in pressure chambers to see how long it would take until their eyes popped out of the sockets. Lethal bacteria and other biological weapons were tested on people tied to stakes. Fetuses were cut from pregnant women and preserved in jars. The Japanese government also sponsored bombings of bubonic plague on villages to test germ warfare for later use on the United States.

Because over twenty thousand women and girls were raped, the Nanking Massacre is also referred to as the Rape of Nanking. The Japanese officers encouraged their soldiers to rape wherever they went. One officer told his soldiers, "To avoid troubles,... kill them after that." So, soldiers raped in gangs of dozens and murdered the women afterward. The victims had their stomachs cut open or their breasts chopped off. "Comfort women" were kept as sex slaves in wood cabins to service the Japanese soldiers throughout the day. In one incident, a mother, two teenage daughters, and a one year old baby were raped in their own home. The family was raped and killed on their own tables and beds. When the International Committee entered the house to photograph the incident, they found blood everywhere.

The Japanese finally left China when the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/truth/genocide.shtml

And some here equate waterboarding with torture. Incredible.

 

[Crabtownboy]

People can say, cry and whine all day long that waterboarding is not torture, but they are wrong. It is torture and is against international law.

Bent Sørensen, Senior Medical Consultant to the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims and former member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture has said:
It's a clear-cut case: Waterboarding can without any reservation be labeled as torture. It fulfils all of the four central criteria that according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) defines an act of torture. First, when water is forced into your lungs in this fashion, in addition to the pain you are likely to experience an immediate and extreme fear of death. You may even suffer a heart attack from the stress or damage to the lungs and brain from inhalation of water and oxygen deprivation. In other words there is no doubt that waterboarding causes severe physical and/or mental suffering – one central element in the UNCAT's definition of torture. In addition the CIA's waterboarding clearly fulfills the three additional definition criteria stated in the Convention for a deed to be labeled torture, since it is 1) done intentionally, 2) for a specific purpose and 3) by a representative of a state – in this case the US.[137]

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

 

[padredurand]

So you don't agree with McCain's statement that we have tortured prisoners acting against the Geneva convention and other international treaties? You're the expert not the Republican Senator who himself was tortured?

I'm no expert but I can read. Go to Berkley's War Crimes Archive and read. It is dry, unemotional and free of hyperbole. Just the facts. The description of torturous acts committed in WWII are much different than the the CIA's description of waterboarding techniques.

"I would be strapped to a special bed which can be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Water was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe. This obviously could only be done for one or two minutes at a time. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about 1 hour." ~ Khaled Shaik Mohammed

The procedure was applied during five different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention.

Mr. Khaled Shaik Mohammed, Red Cross 2007 Report, page 10

Five times. I'm sure it has caused psychological distress for Shaik Mohammed.

Two to three years after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, one in eight residents who lived near the site had signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a New York City Health Department study reports.

This rate, 12.6 percent, among Lower Manhattan residents is three times the usual rate and matches the 12.4 percent rate reported among rescue and recovery workers. Residents who were injured during the attacks had the highest rate of PTSD symptoms (38 percent), followed by those who witnessed violent deaths and those caught in the dust cloud after the towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. ~ US News and World Report

Apparently, in some views, their distress is inconsequential.

 

[carpro]

People can say, cry and whine all day long that waterboarding is not torture, but they are wrong. It is torture and is against international law.

You'd better get busy making the US bring its definitions of torture in line with yours.

Right now, you're all wet. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Crabtownboy]

You'd better get busy making the US bring its definitions of torture in line with yours.

Old buddy, where have you been? So far I have not given a definition of torture, but I have give you links to authortative sources that all say that waterboarding is torture and a violation of international law.

 

[carpro]

You'd better get busy making the US bring its definitions of torture in line with yours.

Old buddy, where have you been? So far I have not given a definition of torture, but I have give you links to authortative sources that all say that waterboarding is torture and a violation of international law.

Cop out.

The US Code does define it and it differs from yours...and your "authoritative sources".

Get busy making those changes.