Waterboarding: Harsh, Yes - But is it Torture?

This is the second time I've posted about waterboarding in the last several hours. The earlier post is over a thousand words long. It's a detailed, informative look at waterboarding: and a bit long for a blog post.

Time for comparative terseness:

Whether or not waterboarding is an acceptable interrogation method seems to depend on whether or not it's "torture."

Quite a few people feel that restraining someone on a board, putting a cloth over the subject's face, and pouring water on the cloth, is torture. Last year, some anti-war demonstrators showed what waterboarding is, by doing it to each other. ("Torture? Public Waterboard Demonstration in DC" YouTube (November 06, 2007)).

I'll admit that it looks unpleasant: maybe worse than some frat house initiations.

But "torture?" Torture is something people don't, as a rule, do to their friends. It's genuinely destructive, like ripping out a prisoner's fingernails, branding him, or pulling him apart on the rack.

Anti-war demonstrators and CIA interrogators aren't the only Americans who engage in waterboarding. It's a part of training for America's military.

Since America subjects its own troops to waterboarding, there are two possibilities:

1. America tortures its own soldiers
2. Waterboarding is not torture

I vote for #2.

Waterboarding is unpleasant, it's "harsh," but it's not "torture."

I go on (and on) in "Waterboarding: What is it? Why Do it?" Another War-on-Terror Blog (March 8, 2008)