Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

To illustrate what our government is doing, it is now helpful to visist Khmer Rouge prison museums. There, you will find instruments of torture, such as a waterboard. Here's a photo, courtesy of blogger David Corn (HT: Sullivan):

[Image]
Go read the post. There's another view of the waterboard and an illustration of the waterboard in action. And here's the most important quote:
Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies--the states where US military personnel might have faced torture--were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That's what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information. Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they're also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn't a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it's sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.(emphasis added) I am deeply ashamed to be following in the footsteps of some of the vilest regimes in modern history.