Comments for Waterboarding, Torture, and Me at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 21 out of 20 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:31:45 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-15518 Sen. John McCain was waterboarded in 'Nam and said it's torture, and he knows whereof he speaks. Dr. Jerald Ogrisseg, former chief psychologist for SERE, said before the US Senate Armed Services Committee that waterboarding teaches POWs that resistence is futile, the exact opposite of what the SERE C-Level program is all about. Why continue to waterboard at Warner Springs (the Navy is the only service that uses it, and only at Warner Springs)? Maybe the Interrogators get-off on damaging othe men? And there are statistics about both physical and psychological damages that occur, and they're not inconsequential. - Robert Johnson Sat, 26 Jan 2013 10:21:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-3937 When you hate a president as much as the left hated Bush, reality flies out the door about as fast as a beam of light. These people hated Bush , the Iraq invasion, defending America, the Bush admin not accepting how much evil America deserved 9/11 and the "fact" that Iraq was all about Bush and Cheney taking Iraq's oil and putting it in their back yard storage bins. If it was'nt waterboarding it would have been something else to mobilize dissent... - vesey Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:31:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1902 How does Waterboarding compare with the infamous Chinese Water Torture? By the way, real torture is used as a training technique for government agents -- that is, causing it, not enduring it. I find torture to be against human dignity. If someone wants to be an uncooperative martyr, just shoot him. - johnny Mon, 25 May 2009 06:32:21 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1893 So waterboarding being used to train people to resist torture proves that waterboarding... isn't torture. Hmmm. - dan Sat, 23 May 2009 06:06:26 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1868 Thank you Dennis, we really need a man of reason on this debate. I do think the media is hyping this up out of proportion to defame the Bush administration. Is not about torture, it's about Bush. - Reyes C Thu, 21 May 2009 10:27:02 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1866 Sen McCain understands - viscerally - more about torture than the other 99 Senators added together. And he's against its use, no? A point of moral calculus I haven't seen raised: given that waterboarding IS torture, and agreeing that ends don't justify means, still isn't it right that given a forced choice of two evils, we may and must select the lesser one? Isn't this what is represented by the "ticking time bomb" argument for the use of waterboarding? - Tom B Thu, 21 May 2009 05:52:39 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1864 Pio: You've retreated from a very bad parallel to a simply weak and uninformed position. Many leaders of the pro-life movement are now women. They don't get a much mainstream media access because putting, for example, Glendon or Janet Smith in the "pro-life" seat in any debate immediately disrupts the "It's what women want" meme that informs every mainstream media handling of the issue. To be an effective pro-life female is to be ignored by anti-life media. - SC Phelan Wed, 20 May 2009 19:34:44 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1863 The Church\'s teaching to protect life is indeed an issue for all. Yet it is largely proclaimed in public by males, while it is women who make the ultimate decision that precedes every abortion. My point is simply that Catholic women (perhaps even some who have had abortions and repented) could better understand and reach other women who are desperate and contemplating this sinful act. Put someone like MAGlendon on TV as often as the bishops were during the ND debacle. - Pio Wed, 20 May 2009 15:17:18 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1860 Pio, your parallel is twisted. Who among us has experienced death by abortion? Until the unborn can speak for themselves, we are called as Christians to give them voice. It is not a women's issue, but an issue for all, and we all suffer as a result. Besides, the "faithful lay and religious women of the Catholic Church" are those who support the teachings of Christ and live them out daily in their lives; they don't work against God's plan for life on earth. - RB Wed, 20 May 2009 14:26:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1859 Ditto and amen. Warner Springs freezes your butt off even in mid spring (1989), and waterboarding ain't pleasant --but it is HIGHLY effective -- though not torture. The best measure I have yet heard is that if lefty journalists and protesting students will willingly subject themselves to it as a political stunt -- it is, ipso facto, not torture. - G.R. Mead Wed, 20 May 2009 14:25:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1862 If the intent of water boarding at SERE is to train personnel to withstand torture, then it seems a stretch to argue that it isn’t torture. Plus, consider: After World War II, the US tried Japanese for war crimes which included water boarding. (one example: in 1947, Yukio Asano, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for water boarding a civilian.) In 1968, Army investigated and court-martialed a soldier who appeared in a newspaper story water boarding a Vietnamese soldier. In 1983, - Bruce Wed, 20 May 2009 13:54:26 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1857 I agree... but we run a fine line, one Raymond Barry is alluding to, which should be avoided at all costs; namely, utilitarianism. Once we start to consider the cost benefit analyses of ethical conduct there is nothing IN PRINCIPLE from distinguishing getting information from a terrorist (via non-lethal torture) in order to save a few lives and getting info from a terrorist (via lethal torture) in order to save lives. Once the end is what justifies our actions, all hope is lost for ethics. - Andrew Wed, 20 May 2009 12:42:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1855 WJ, There are 2 articles on torture posted yesterday, May 19, 2009, that you should read. One is by Tommy de Seno at the Justified Right and the other is by Andrew McCarthy at National Review. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett, for your reasonable perspective on this issue. - JDS Wed, 20 May 2009 12:33:57 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1854 I guess it's not very Christian of me, but I would do a lot worse than waterboarding to captured terrorists who might have vital information. Any objections I might have would center around the utilitarian: would it work. Otherwise it seems to me they have already disqualified themselves from being members of the human race. - Raymond Barry Wed, 20 May 2009 12:13:07 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1853 In fact, the US Government approved "stress-positions" that were as damaging to the prisoner as those suffered by McCain in Vietnam. In fact, we know of at least three prisoners who *died* because of these interrogation techniques, and one other (an American citizen) who was rendered legally insane by them. In fact, precisely the practice of waterboarding and stress positions here being discussed are routinely described and condemned as torture *by our government*, when others commit them. - WJ Wed, 20 May 2009 12:12:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1852 Thank you for Dennis Bartlett's commentary on waterboarding and the reckless misuse of language that terms severe discomfort "torture." It seems not to occur to many of our clerics that respecting the "intrinsic dignity of others"---the potential victims of terror, for example--places an obligation on the state to use coercion in certain situations. Moral vanity provides cover for shallow, irresponsible pronouncements. - Maureen Mullarkey Wed, 20 May 2009 10:08:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1851 The author writes: "It’s easy to indulge in moral outrage about things you have never experienced..." Perhaps the bishops of the Church should ponder this advice and delegate much of the teaching about abortion to the faithful lay and religious women of the Catholic Church. - Pio Wed, 20 May 2009 10:07:52 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1849 Of two of the big issues currently in the spotlight, torture and abortion, one is on a continuum, the other is not. There is no "partial" abortion. If the target is killed, the abortion is successful. Torture is not like that. For some people, sitting through an opera might qualify. Equating waterboarding with crucifixion, by using the same term and talking about it as if both were the same thing, masks reality. Thanks for adding some perspective to this matter. - Tom Cabeen Wed, 20 May 2009 10:06:48 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1848 As a Navy Corpsman I went through the classroom SERE, but was for some reason spared the camp drill. Whew! But I was posted to Viet-Nam in several locations, and witnessed -- I picked up the pieces -- that what the Communists did to the people they claimed to be liberating was obscene in every way, torture followed by executions. - Mack Hall Wed, 20 May 2009 10:06:06 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/waterboarding-torture-and-me.html#comment-1847 For Bartlett to suggest that his 3 second intervals of waterboarding approximates the practice of waterboarding being discussed currently in the media is utterly fallacious. It is precisely the extended time frame of the practice that creates the extreme psychological duress and severe emotional fear. To suggest that such prolonged conduct is not a form of torture, because he experienced 3 seconds of it unharmed is irrelevant. I guess psychological torture doesn't count for him. - Abelard Wed, 20 May 2009 07:42:03 +0100