The author and political commentator Christopher Hitchins maintained that it wasn't, and took a challenge to have it done to himself. When it was over, he agreed that it was torture.
Problem is it's a slippery slope man. Sure some people probably do deserve torture, but once you start saying "well it's ok to torture him if he's a terrorist". Then what's the definition of a terrorist? See where I'm going with this? It's a horrific violation of human rights, and like slavery it has no place in civilized society.
Uh, yeah, of course waterboarding is torture. They put a fucking hood over your head so you can't see shit, and then dump water on your head with no warning over and over again. I think I'd rather be thumbscrewed to be honest
The rules of war say no but the Bible says an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek. Kinda conflicting... Who's right or wrong? Depends on weather your the "EE" or the "OR"
Terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got waterboarded 183 times, but I think that many instances were all part of the same sessions. In any case, it makes you wonder how effective it was after the first 10 or 20 times. At least there hasn't been any more attacks on U.S. soil, which is impressive because, after 9/11, Al Qaeda vowed that there would be far worse incidents to come - so maybe the torture did yield important information. We got a lot of guys, the organization was pretty much decimated.
Absolutely not. Information extracted by torture is unreliable, and that's ignoring the humanitarian aspect of it.
It's not quite as lame as merely dumping water on your head. You're laid on a diagonal board, head down, and water is pored down your neck and over your head, up your nose and into your mouth to simulate drowning.
Torture gives the incentive to provide false intelligence, the prisoner will say anything to make the pain stop. The world isn't one big action movie.
I'd take a quick decapitation instead of slow painful terrifying death by drowning (which can happen easily). It's still torture, it doesn't sound too bad but it's horrible.
It's hilarious and a bit pitiful seeing you equate those to each other. Of course it isn't ok for them to decapitate our soldiers, so why would you think its ok for us to do it to them? Are you using the Kindergarten Strategy "he did it first!!", to make real world philosophical judgments? We don't have to "be nice" to them, we have the freedom of speech as well, however, if you support torturing an unarmed and restrained human being (with sometimes little to no evidence of any wrongdoing) then you need to reconsider your moral standards my friend. Have an open mind. A soldier from Afghanistan thinks we are evil and oppressive. A soldier from the USA thinks Afghanistan is evil and oppressive. We prove it to them by using torture.