Water Boarding: Is it justified?

[matie-k]

I think just about the only way a christian could say torture was right is if they're speaking of others (the government) doing it. When you pass it off to a big system, it's not as personal and easier to accept as ok.

[John81]

That's true Katie which is why we must remember it isn't some "government" doing the torturing, it's an actual person (or persons) torturing another person.

Would any of us think it was okay for our loved ones to be tortured because someone thuoght they knew some important information? Why would we condone the torture of someone elses loved one?

Torture just doesn't pass the biblical principles test.

[Psalms18_28]

I just remembered something, The bible says:

Joh 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

So I guess stoning is a bad idea to use to question rather if the bible support torture or not.

[John81]

McConnell weighs in on waterboarding By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 8 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The nation's intelligence chief says waterboarding "would be torture" if used against him or if someone under interrogation actually was taking water into his lungs.


But Mike McConnell, in a magazine interview, declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.

"If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it," McConnell told The New Yorker, which published a 16,000-word article Sunday on the director of national intelligence.

The comments come as the House Intelligence Committee investigates the CIA's destruction of videotaped interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects. The tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed three years later, over fears they would leak. They depicted the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques against two of the three men known to have been waterboarded by the CIA.

As McConnell describes it, a prisoner is strapped down with a wash cloth over his face and water is dripped into his nose.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture," McConnell told the magazine.

A spokesman for McConnell said he does not dispute the quotes attributed to him in the story by Lawrence Wright, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for "The Looming Towers", a book on al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks.

McConnell said the legal test for torture should be "pretty simple."

"Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?" he said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto refused comment Saturday on waterboarding.

"We don't talk about interrogation techniques. And we are not going to respond to every little thing that shows up in the press," he told The Associated Press. "We think McConnell is doing an incredible job heading up the intelligence community, reforming it and making it incredibly effective in being able to provide the president the best intelligence on threats to the nation. We think it's vitally important he and the intelligence community have all the tools they need."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has declined to rule on whether waterboarding is torture. An affirmative finding by Muksasey could put at risk the CIA interrogators who were given permission by the White House in 2002 to waterboard three prisoners deemed resistant to conventional techniques. The CIA has not used the technique since 2003; CIA Director Michael Hayden prohibited in 2006.

The House and Senate intelligence committees want to prohibit the CIA from using any interrogation techniques not allowed by the military. That list includes waterboarding. If their bill authorizing intelligence activities for 2008 is approved by Congress, it almost certainly will face a veto from President Bush.

Last summer he issued an executive order allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what is allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual.

The House has approved the bill. The Senate has not yet voted on it because of objections to that restriction.

Wright disclosed in his article that the government has eavesdropped on his own telephone conversations with sources at least twice.

One was with a relative of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, who wanted to know if all of Zawahiri's children were dead. Wright was told by an intelligence source that a summary of that phone call was contained in an intelligence database. Under the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, if the government did not have a court order to monitor Wright, his name should have been concealed in the database.

Wright also was approached by FBI officials about calls he made to the lawyer of several men he had interviewed for his book on al-Qaida. Wright says the FBI erroneously believed his daughter, who had just graduated from college and was in Paris, had placed the calls. That landed her in FBI files as an al-Qaida connection.

McConnell told Wright he did not know how his daughter's name would have become known to the agency.

It is unclear under what authorities those intercepts were conducted.

"It may be troublesome, it may not be," McConnell said. "You don't know."

Wright told the AP the conversation with McConnell disturbed him because he realized his calls ? and therefore his sources ? could be exposed to government eavesdropping.

The Senate returns to work this month on a domestic surveillance law to replace the one Congress hastily passed in August. That law, which expanded the government's authority to listen in on American communications without court permission, expires Feb. 1. There are deep political divisions over whether telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on U.S. citizens' calls should be protected from lawsuits.

In discussing Osama bin Laden, McConnell said if the U.S. got a read on the al-Qaida's leader's precise location, it would not hesitate to cross the Pakistan border to capture or kill him. "You cannot indiscriminately attack a sovereign nation," McConnell said, but said "we'll bring it to closure." He says bin Laden is in the lawless region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080113/ap_ ... errogation

[JerryNumbers]

Stoning was mentioned, so I thought I would post this.

Amnesty urges Iran to stop stoning executions

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080115/wl_ ... oning_dc_1

[RayJr]

this may need to be a new thread I don't know if it does lets take it elsewhere , but I have a question,

If you have a man has put a bomb on child and sent him into a school and only he knew how to disarm the bomb how far is it ok for you to go in tring to get the information and when do you say we must stop because it is torture. Do you stop and let the children die so that you do not hurt the man or do you do all you can to get the information from him??

There is no question that there is no good route to go so do you not choose the lesser evil??
Don't say niether cause then you have already made your choice the kids die. Is there a right answer?

[JerryNumbers]

Many have already made that choice, let the child die.

I don't know, for some of them, if its their child, it might be different when they know it affecting their own.

[LAF]

I think that they should use whatever means that they think will get the job done .

[kevinmiller]

I think that they should use whatever means that they think will get the job done .

You have no idea the ramifications of that statement. :-S

[LAF]

Well why should we tie the hands of those in the millitary ?I would think that one has the option of confessing before they resort to other means .

Although I really believe that other countries use worse measures than the US has every done for getting confessions.

[kevinmiller]

Well why should we tie the hands of those in the millitary ?I would think that one has the option of confessing before they resort to other means .

Although I really believe that other countries use worse measures than the US has every done for getting confessions.

Yes, but you don't know what kind of other lewd or cruel and inhuman acts it could lead to. If a Christian would be unable to inflict unimaginable pain on another human being, for whatever reason, we should NEVER support someone else doing it.

[John81]

All things are in God's hands and prayer is always appropriate. Nowhere in Scripture are we told it's okay to act cruelly towards another "for a good reason."

Should pro-life people round up the abortion doctors and torture them until they agree not to murder a million babies a year?

[Madeline]

All things are in God's hands and prayer is always appropriate. Nowhere in Scripture are we told it's okay to act cruelly towards another "for a good reason."

Should pro-life people round up the abortion doctors and torture them until they agree not to murder a million babies a year?

Good point! :thumb

[kevinmiller]

All things are in God's hands and prayer is always appropriate. Nowhere in Scripture are we told it's okay to act cruelly towards another "for a good reason."

Should pro-life people round up the abortion doctors and torture them until they agree not to murder a million babies a year?

The end never justifies the means.

[HappyChristian]

The end never justifies the means.

Sorry, John, but there is a difference between wartime and citizens taking things into their own hands. Vast difference.