What is your view on waterboarding?

[BigBossman]

Over the weekend I was listening to a radio talk show & they were discussing torture being used on terrorists being detained at Guantánamo Bay. Some of the main forms of torture being used were sleep deprevation & waterboarding.

I personally believe that when you are dealing with confirmed terrorists (not people just given that label) that it is important to do what it takes to protect our nation. If you also look at how other countries have treated our troops when they are captured, waterboarding pales in comparison.

What is your stance on this issue?

 

[Crabtownboy]

Over the weekend I was listening to a radio talk show & they were discussing torture being used on terrorists being detained at Guantánamo Bay. Some of the main forms of torture being used were sleep deprevation & waterboarding.

I personally believe that when you are dealing with confirmed terrorists (not people just given that label) that it is important to do what it takes to protect our nation. If you also look at how other countries have treated our troops when they are captured, waterboarding pales in comparison.

What is your stance on this issue?

Should we lower ourself to their level? Waterboarding is toture and we should have nothing to do with torture.

By the way, torture has been shown to be a poor way of gathering accurate intelligence. Torture a person long enough and they will tell you anything that they believe you want to hear.

 

[Revmitchell]

Water boarding, sleep deprivation, etc. Good tactics and no where near the level of what they do.:thumbs:

 

[matt wade]

I know we are in the politics forum here, but isn't it important to be a Christian in all aspects of our life? Is it really Christ honoring to use tactics like waterboarding? Could you actually see our Lord and Savior utilizing waterboarding against someone? Would you feel comfortable administering waterboarding with Jesus watching you do it?

Would people that agree with waterboarding actually administer it themselves, or are they only comfortable with it if it is done by "someone else" and is out of sight and mind?

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how waterboarding fits in from a Biblical perspective. Can anyone give me a single scriptural reference that would even hint that these techniques are an acceptable way of getting information out of someone?

 

[BigBossman]

I'm not saying that I would feel comfortable doing that. Anyone who does feel comfortable should have their head examined. I also believe that it should be used as a last resort.

Let me ask you, what would be your idea for an effective alternative to waterboarding? If there's something more humane & more effective, then I'm all for it.

 

[Magnetic Poles]

100% against it. America should not be a nation that tortures. Period.

 

[matt wade]

I'm not saying that I would feel comfortable doing that. Anyone who does feel comfortable should have their head examined. I also believe that it should be used as a last resort.

Let me ask you, what would be your idea for an effective alternative to waterboarding? If there's something more humane & more effective, then I'm all for it.

I honestly don't know what techniques work best for extracting information from people so I can't give alternatives.

My problem with the "last resort" argument is, "Where do we draw the line?". Say waterboarding doesn't get the information that we want, is it then ok to start cutting off fingers? How about putting them on some type of strectching machine? My point is that at some point you have to draw a line and say, "We've done all we can do. Anything further is not acceptable."

 

[hillclimber1]

I am for it completely.. And ANY other method that saves the lives of our troops and citizens.... I don't care a whit if you put the "torture" label on it or not.... I also don't care if you want to intimate that we are somehow "above" that.... I am not.. I don't care that you have bought into the notion that "torture" produces answers you want instead of the truth. The truth can be found, if it's in there....

If someone had my grandchild, and I had the perpetrator, there is nothing in my imagination that I would not do to get the answer... Are our troops and ordinary citizens of less value.... OK, I've said my piece....flame away.. Totally unchristian viewpoint??? Gee, on here???

 

[windcatcher]

I'm against waterboarding: I think it has the potential to drown or create a compromise of health from which a person may not recover and dead people don't talk. Is the person already convicted of a crime? Is he continuing to withhold pertinent information which is necessary to unraveling the crime or prevent further crime? Isn't torture barbaric? Once it is allowed and justified and accepted by a society, where does it end? What about innocents?


Deprive a person of sleep, feed 'em misinformation, deprive him of social contact, lower their inhibitions by giving 'em pheno, but no torture. Torture is generally thought of as barbaric....and it is .......and it compromises the nation who accepts it in any form and any justification tends to lend credance to other forms and other countries to adopt it as accepted protocol. Where does it end when a 'civilized' society starts accepting it? Accused terrorist? Enemy combantants? A family member who happens to be caught up in a sting operation but who is innocent and just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? If now for plotting threats to life...... what tomorrow? ....petty theift? ......door to door witnessing/trespass/demonstrating without permits/ false accusation of assembling to riot.....when simply calling a group together to protest opposition to an ordinance or policy?

 

[KenH]

I am opposed to the United States or any country or any person using waterboarding or any form of torture.

 

[windcatcher]

I am for it completely.. And ANY other method that saves the lives of our troops and citizens.... I don't care a whit if you put the "torture" label on it or not.... I also don't care if you want to intimate that we are somehow "above" that.... I am not.. I don't care that you have bought into the notion that "torture" produces answers you want instead of the truth. The truth can be found, if it's in there....

If someone had my grandchild, and I had the perpetrator, there is nothing in my imagination that I would not do to get the answer... Are our troops and ordinary citizens of less value.... OK, I've said my piece....flame away.. Totally unchristian viewpoint??? Gee, on here???

Why should I or another attack you for your opinion and question your Christianity? This is an opinion piece, dear fellow, and you have every right to express yours. As long as others center their discussions around the subject and their reasons for agreeing or disagreeing.... we all benefit and have cause to think deeper without involving personal attacks.



(I maintain my stand where I put it, but this is to acknowledge to you and other members on this board that I also respect different opinions that are presented without personal attack.)

 

[chuck2336]

I agree that water boarding is bad. With that said let me add this. While I was in the military as a combat medic I had an instructor that was a medic in Vietnam. This is what he said.

"By the Geneva Convention if you are captured carrying an automatic weapon you will lose you healthcare designation as a POW."

He then stopped looked at all of us and said, "I have told you the rules, now let me tell you what you should do" He then let us know that none of our enemies follow the Geneva convention anyway so find you the biggest weapon you can carry.

When I landed in country during desert storm I only hand my 9mm issue. With in the hour I had an M-16.

What all of us need to realize is that we are talking about war, not kickball where everyone follows the rules. I want my country to go down EVERY Avenue to insure the safety of my family. If they leave a stone unturned for fear of hurting someone’s feelings that stone just maybe the one that kills my family.

I wish we lived in a world that war didn’t happen, or that bad people didn’t exist. But we don’t, and they want more than anything to live in a world where America doesn’t exist. So while we are playing by the rules, they are planning another attack.

Again I do not agree with torture, but I don’t agree with allowing people to kill Americans when we can stop it.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

I think that since waterboarding received bi-partisan approval, maybe there's something we aren't being told. Pelosi said it didn't go far enough. What was she told that we weren't ?

 

[pinoybaptist]

I know of someone who was trained to withstand torture, both psychological and physical. Real tough nut to crack, you see.
Until the guy in charge ordered a basin of water brought in, had the guy stripped buck naked, and then the guy in charge left the room, leaving the subject and one of the soldiers to guard the subject.

The subject asked the soldier what the basin of water was for.

Soldier: To wash your chicken**t blood away after we cut that little self of yours dangling in front of ya, what d'ya think ?

Subject: What exactly do you guys want to know ?

A cop grew so frustrated at his inability to have his suspect point out the other suspects' whereabouts he borrowed a boa constrictor from an itinerant medicine hawker and let the constrictor loose in the suspect's cell through a window while the suspect was sleeping just below the window.
Before the day was out, they had all the suspects in, plus signed confessions, a prosecution witness in a former suspect who was so grateful the cop saved him from that stray constrictor (who truly hadn't been fed for days and was very irate).

On the other hand, a constabulary officer in my day tried the "good cop" approach and talked with a captured communist guerilla, chatting with him like the other guy wasn't somebody who would kill an 80 year old female village chief by inserting a rusty, dull pointed jungle machete trough the gap between the woman's clavicle and her neck straight to the old woman's heart and have the woman's relatives watch, from children to grandchildren, just for good measure to instill a lesson among the village population that they shouldn't snitch.

Good cop never got anywhere for five full days. He fed the guy, gave him smokes, bought him soda and pop and anything he wanted, let him have his visits, his water, his coffee, his blankets, his shower, etc., etc., etc. and never got anything from the bad guy except a mouthful of communist slogans, rhetorics, a lecture on dialectical materialism, feudalism, US imperialsim, Marcos dictatorship and US complicity, and how the masses will rise and so on.

Five days. Until he blew a cap off the bad guy, and poured a mixture of salt, vinegar and crushed red pepper onto the wound and added human feces on top of everything.

He got everything he needed on the sixth day. They had to amputate the bad guy's leg, but what's a leg in exchange for lives saved, eh ? A leg for the revolution. Not bad. The guy will get his medal, maybe a statue of his leg, IF they ever get in power.

 

[dragonfly]

I think that since waterboarding received bi-partisan approval, maybe there's something we aren't being told. Pelosi said it didn't go far enough. What was she told that we weren't ?

So, I guess this is a firm maybe.

I am against water-boarding or other forms of torture. It is shameful that many so-called Christians support it!

 

[Bro. Curtis]

:laugh:

Trying to assuage yer guilt over yer embryonic stem cell support ?

 

[pinoybaptist]

I know we are in the politics forum here, but isn't it important to be a Christian in all aspects of our life? Is it really Christ honoring to use tactics like waterboarding? Could you actually see our Lord and Savior utilizing waterboarding against someone? Would you feel comfortable administering waterboarding with Jesus watching you do it?

Would people that agree with waterboarding actually administer it themselves, or are they only comfortable with it if it is done by "someone else" and is out of sight and mind?

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how waterboarding fits in from a Biblical perspective. Can anyone give me a single scriptural reference that would even hint that these techniques are an acceptable way of getting information out of someone?

(I bolded what I wanted to comment on).

Lemmesee. Jesus is Jehovah God in the Old Testament, and if I remember correctly, Jehovah God ordered Saul to kill all the Amalekites (I don't have my Bible open so I'm not sure if they were the Amalekites), including their cattle and other livestock.

Now, if I remember correctly, Saul didn't follow orders, and he didn't spare the king for compassion's sake, either, nor did he keep the livestock of the enemy for the same reason.

Next thing you know, he ain't gon' be king no longer, he ain't Jehovah God's anointed anymore, and here's Samuel cutting the Amalekite king in pieces right before Samuel's eyes.

So what am I saying ?

I wouldn't drag Jesus into the discussion, much as I do not want to talk like the cruelty of Islam takes the cake.

 

[Jim1999]

I have visions of a bloke standing on a board being towed behind a motorboat.

Cheers,

Jim

 

[pinoybaptist]

I have visions of a bloke standing on a board being towed behind a motorboat.

Cheers,

Jim

It's a cruel world, Jim.
The long and short of it is, the guys out there in the front who take the bullets that would kill our families need to do what they need to do to make sure their buddies are safe, and come home alive if possible, and that we in our air-conditioned cars, comfortable beds, and comfortable church pews are safe.

 

[LadyEagle]

Waterboarding is far more humane than sucking a fetus out of the womb piece by piece. Amazing how liberals think waterboarding is torture, and think nothing of human extrication limb by limb or burning by salt poison of innocent babies. Sad.