CIA: We stand behind our actions — and the results

Hot Air ^ | 2:45 pm on April 21, 2009 | Ed Morrissey

[TXnMA]

I like the "Helicopter Method" depicted in the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy"... '-}

[Ditto]

"The Gods Must Be Crazy"...

Funniest movie ever. I saw it the first time when I was out of town staying in a hotel. When I got home, I rented it for our family Friday Night movie.

When it started my kids where whining about what a lame movie Dad picked. Before it was over, they had tears running down their cheeks from laughing so hard.

[dennisw]

Waterboarding is torture.

The Khmer Rouge and others used it to torture and to get phony confessions. Some of  those water boarded got brain damage due to oxygen deprivation
We do not use it as torture. We do it very quick (less than a minute) and painlessly and we do it strictly to get intelligence

If I am going to be tortured I will take one minute of water boarding over real torture such as Saddam Hussein used any day of the week. Saddam knew real torture do does a Khalid Sheik Muhammed

[TXnMA]

Yep! It is one of our family's all-time favorites, too.

My granddaughter had a couple of of her fourth-grade friends over for a sleepover last weekend, and she cajoled me into letting them stay up to watch the "Ai! Yi-Yaii! Yi-Yaiiiiii!" movie -- as our grandkids call it... '-) They had a great time...

[Ditto]

It sure hit my funny bone. The Bushman who trekked hundreds of miles to throw the Coke bottle off the end of the earth was the only sane person in the flick. ;~))

[angkor]

OK, since we have no official or authoritative benchmark on the absolute definition of “torture”, let’s just move on to say that waterboarding is a practice that should be reserved and limited to nasty operators such as KSM.

Anything further discussion is exactly the kind of semantic hairsplitting that appeals to lawyers. It’s also the this same lawyerly discussion that took place among White House staffers in 2003 and 2004.

When the simple answer then as now would have been to drop the “is it or isn’t it” arguments, concede that it may be, take responsibility for it, and move on.

There may occasionally be things that patriots must do without further deliberation, and then leave the consequences to a jury of one’s peers.

That’s pretty much what GWB and his staff did in this case and you can’t really fault them for it.

[Wuli]

I don’t mind if you want to accept “Waterboarding” as torture, because you also want to accept torture as an occasionally, under certain circumstances, O.K. thing to do. That’s fine.

But, on a factual basis, by any classical definition, “Waterboarding” is not torture, even though the unsuspecting recipient of that act believes it to be at the time.

Like I said, it is a mind game, and only a mind game, executed by physical means. The body is in fact not harmed, nor in danger of it and the psyche does not suffer any irreparable harm. If that were not the case, it could not be administered to our own special forces in their training.

It is not a matter of “undefining” torture, but of keeping it in it’s historical, classical and rightful meanings.

Is it intense “psychological warfare”, on an individual scale? Yes. Torture? No.

[Marine_Uncle]

I have been busy in my chores as temp caregiver for my mom, so I have not been on the boards till now. I may check out Fox to see if anything in the way of videos is still available on this one.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just posted this ....

2007: Torture update: What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?

Cause today Nancy says this...FR Thread:

Pelosi: I didn't know about waterboarding

[Marine_Uncle]

Pelosi is one operator. One hell of a lier and actor. She is every bit as good as Zero and BJ in the lying department, by all indications.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest.