Would this writer voluntarily waterboard or be waterboarded by someone else?
Probably not.

But I think a stuntman with a medical observer and a film crew could make an excellent YouTube demonstration of the method. Since some apologists argue it's not that bad, perhaps we can observe for ourselves what some endorse in the abstract.

(I assume such a supervised stunt would be risky but morally licit, yes?)
Kevin Jones | Homepage | 09.29.06 - 11:40 pm | #

Waterboarding is out, according to this deal, so to claim that it allows it is just wrong. As Scott Shane and Adam Liptak write in today's New York Times:

"This bill is about so many things, and it’s a mixed bag," said Elisa Massimino, the Washington director of Human Rights First, a civil liberties group.

Ms. Massimino’s group and others criticized the bill as a whole, but she agreed with the Republican senators who negotiated for weeks with the White House that it would ban the most extreme interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military.

"The senators made clear that waterboarding is criminal," Ms. Massimino said, referring to a technique used to simulate drowning. "That’s a human rights enforcement upside."

As I understood it, as far as torture goes, the entire debate was about practices that fell between the "organ failure-death" standard of the White House and the "cruel, inhuman and degrading" standard adopted by everyone else. The latter standard has prevailed, as seen in this language:

"IN GENERAL. No individual in the custody or under the physical
control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

(2) CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT DEFINED. The term "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" in this subsection shall mean the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984."

In other words, if it's unconstitutional in the US, it's illegal on prisoners. Do you think waterboarding is constitutional in the US?

To me, it frankly seems that the torture issue is now being used to generate outrage about habaeus corpus rights, which are an entirely different problem altogether. As Shane and Liptak write:

The debate over the limits of torture and the rules for military commission dominated discussion of the bill until this week. Only in the last few days has broad attention turned to its redefinition of “unlawful enemy combatant” and its ban on habeas corpus petitions, which suspects have traditionally used to challenge their incarceration.
CPA | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 10:34 am | #

So, contrary to what Mark is asserting, it is not as bad as it looks?

And here I thought the sky was falling.
JonathanR. | 09.30.06 - 11:49 am | #

It sure is hard to follow the debate on this topic, but that's my impression, yes.

As far as I can tell, on the actual torture-lite issue here is the situation:

The deal and the law adopt language which the proponents like McCain contend mean it can't be used, even though the language doesn't specifically mention any particular technique. Senator Graham specifically said he thinks waterboarding is out. It links these definitions to ones already in US statutory law.

But, the deal also gives the right to the president to put specifics on to the defintion of non-grave breaches of Geneva, which as far as I can tell means not the "torture-lite" that was in question, but "torture-heavy" that even the White House didn't want. As far as I can tell, this seems to be the basis on which alarmists therefore say, the president will just say torture-lite isn't even a minor breach (despite the obvious text of the law and agreement that says it's not allowed) and then it will be OK. I just don't buy that argument, that the President would agree to a law linked to US statutory definitions and to an agreement with Senators of his own party and then just ignore the agreement. Call me naive, but I don't buy that he would burn his bridges with the Senate like that.

Plus the president's counsel has said he will specify non-grave breaches by executive order. Critics say, no he won't (on what basis I simply can't tell). But simply saying "the President in the future won't do what he's publicly agreed to do" seems to me to be a bad basis for saying already an evil action has occurred.
CPA | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 12:30 pm | #

That last paragraph was left unclear. What was missing is that if the president specifies what's allowed and what isn't by executive order, it is made public -- so nothing can be allowed secretly without being made subject to public debate.
CPA | Homepage | 09.30.06 - 1:04 pm | #

THIS must be the Potemkin Village of Minas Tirath, I guess.
Tom Connelly | 10.01.06 - 7:24 am | #

does it bother anyone that we in the USA are debating the fine details as to what torture is and isn't?

In all seriousness, wasn't this what really was to be the thing that made us better then say the Soviets?

ora pro nobis
Dale Cebula | 10.01.06 - 10:11 pm | #