Time For Some Enhanced (Blogging) Techniques...

Greetings again!

Hopefully my writing isn't painful enough for my readers (if you're out there) to denounce it as torture. I've thoroughly researched all legal precedents applying to my techniques in blogging, and can safely say that none of them are extreme enough to press the boundaries of the United States Constitution or international law. (Actually, I didn't research at all, but if something comes up, let me know so I can hide when the FBI and Interpol come knocking.)

The same cannot be said about the interrogation tactics employed by the U.S. military and the CIA since the start of the 21st century. I'm particularly peeved by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said, about enhanced interrogation techniques, that "[The Obama administration] called it torture. I don't believe it was torture. This was taken from a May 12 interview with Neil Cavuto of Fox News (Entertainment)

By the way, I have decided to add the title of Entertainment onto the end of the Fox News title because they obviously forgot to declare it themselves somehow. Their style of journalism more closely resembles entertainment than journalism, so that's how I'm going to refer to them from now on. Perhaps I'll turn that rant into another blog...

In any event, Cheney doesn't believe "enhanced interrogation techniques" were torture. These techniques included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity, according to the executive summary of a Senate Committee on Armed Service report published on December 11, 2008.

The United Nations, however, would disagree. In the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which went into effect in 1987, defines it as the following:

"For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.."

I won't push the argument too far on the other three. Just know that by sleep deprivation, I mean that some detainees were forced to stay awake through a variety of measures for seven to eleven days. Forcing someone into a stress position requires them to stand or contort themselves in such a way that focus all weight and support on one or two muscles until the subject succumbs to muscle failure. And forced nudity, a la Abu Ghraib, offends the traditions of the detainees to such an extent that it would cause intense mental suffering.

But waterboarding? A crime that the federal courts once sentenced a Texas sheriff to ten years in prison for? A crime that was used to prosecute Japanese military officers for in 1947? A crime that has been consistently described as torture by the American legal system nearly every time the topic has entered the halls of justice?

Still don't think it's waterboarding? Youtube the demonstrations of it. There's one particularly evocative one performed in front of the Justice Department in 2007. Click link here: Waterboarding Demonstration

By any reasonable, accepted definition of torture, waterboarding is torture.

In America? By Americans? Cynics would tell me that America never held itself to those standards, that I should put away my rose-colored glasses.

But I don't like that explanation. We need to ensure that we don't torture again. In addition, those who pursued, approved, and implemented the program of torture should be prosecuted. These people who were in our government stained the name and reputation of the United States with their actions. We wouldn't allow other perpetrators to escape unpunished.

But they won't be punished. And we'll probably torture again. Comments, thoughts? Disagree? Agree?

Let me hear it,

The Conscientious Observer

"[Waterboarding] isn't simulated drowning. It is a process in which the individual is actually drowning even though he is not underwater." - Malcolm Nance, Former Navy Interrogation Instructor