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Argument: Waterboarding is a mild interrogation technique

Issue Report: Enhanced interrogation techniques

Issue Report: Waterboarding

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Vasko Kohlmayer. The Case for Waterboarding. FrontPageMagazine.com. September 29, 2006 – “careful consideration shows that waterboarding is in fact one of the least injurious among interrogation techniques. To see why this is so, it is enough to contrast it with the most common approach which involves a combination of sleep deprivation and cold exposure. Frequently requiring days and even weeks to break the captive’s spirit, it carries a real possibility of long-term physical and psychological damage. Worse still, it often fails to achieve the desired effect with the result that the captive is subjected to prolonged hardships, but we still end up without the information we so urgently need.

Waterboarding, on the other hand, is fleeting in duration with the actual discomfort lasting seldom more than a couple of minutes. And since a man can be safely deprived of oxygen for at least twice as long, there is almost no risk of long-term harm. The possibility of injury is further reduced by the fact that the procedure calls for no direct physical contact between the subject and his interrogators. Not even as much as pushing or chest slapping is required at any time, making waterboarding one of the safest and least confrontational among interrogation methods. Involving the lowest risk of long-term harm and the least amount of cumulative discomfort, it is also the most humane. Most importantly, it is the most effective.”

Jim Meyers. “Waterboarding Is Not Torture.” NewsMax. December 10, 2007. – “Furthermore, waterboarding should not be considered torture, as some are claiming. Torture is normally defined as the infliction of severe pain, and while waterboarding induces fear because it simulates drowning, it does not inflict pain.

In fact, U.S. special forces are subjected to waterboarding as part of their training in case they are captured and experience the procedure.”

Peter Wehner. “Morality and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”. Commentary Magazine – “the issue of “torture” itself needs to be put in a moral context and on a moral continuum. Waterboarding is a very nasty technique for sure – but it is considerably different (particularly in the manner administered by the CIA) than, say, mutilation with electric drills, rape, splitting knees, or forcing a terrorist to watch his children suffer and die in order to try to elicit information from him. Waterboarding is a technique that has been routinely used in the training of some U.S. military personnel – and which the journalist Christopher Hitchens endured. I certainly wouldn’t want to undergo waterboarding – but while a very harsh technique, it is one that was applied in part because it would do far less damage to a person than other techniques.”