What constitutes torture?

"Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal."

Quoted from a letter by Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, US Navy, Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, US Navy, Major General John L. Fugh, US Army and Brigadier General David M. Brahms, US Marine Corps (all retired, formerly of the Judge Advocates General judicial arm of the U.S. military

President Obama recently caused consternation when he released formerly classified documents describing the much-debated 'enhanced interrogation techniques' used against prisoners and those accused of terrorism by the CIA and Homeland Security.

According to the reports, the six prescribed 'techniques' were as follows:

The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

The question of whether or not these 'techniques' can be classified as 'torture' is something that's being hotly debated at the moment.

Conservatives argue that they're not 'torture' as they don't cause any long-term physical suffering to the victim. Also, any question about how ethical these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' are is mitigated by the value of the information that has been gleaned from using them.

But as far as I'm concerned, the very fact that we're debating whether or not these 'techniques' could be classified as torture pretty much answers that question - of course they are. Waterboarding is the most troubling of them.

Is waterboarding torture?

There's a general consensus condemning techniques like 'waterboarding' - and it's not amongst 'liberals' and 'lefties' like the conservatives might think.

Many, if not most, military experts agree that waterboarding is clear, unequivocal torture.

John McCain had this to say during his campaign for the White House:

"Waterboarding is where a prisoner is restrained and blindfolded while an interrogator pours water on his face and into his mouth—causing the prisoner to believe he is being drowned.

He isn't, of course; there is no intention to injure him physically. But if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating.

The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal.

In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank.

I believe that it is torture. Very exquisite torture."

If the words of John McCain aren't enough to convince you, a quite glance at a history book should. The origins of 'waterboarding' are linked to the Spanish Inquisition - a brutal period of Spanish history in which those accused of heresy were tortured into giving confessions through a variety of brutal methods.

The tortura del agua, what we now know of as 'waterboarding', was a favorite as it caused no scars, burns or visible injuries on the victim. This made their 'confessions' that much more compelling, as if wouldn't have been obvious that they'd been acquired through the use of torture.

The United States first experimented with waterboarding (then know as 'the water cure') during the Spanish-American war of 1898.

When President Roosevelt learned that a prisoner, Tobeniano Ealdama, had been tortured with 'the water cure' by a certain Captain Edwin Glenn, he dismissed the Captain from the army immediately and called upon the army to "prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future."

Waterboarding was a technique used with alarming regularity by the Japanese Kempeitai and Nazi Gestapo during World War 2. French paratroopers later used it during the Algerian War of 1954-62. Henri Alleg, a French-Algerian journalist who was waterboarded during the conflict, reported that accidental death of victims was 'very frequent.' He described his experiences:

"I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation."

Henri Alleg, La Question, 1958

Waterboarding was officially regarded as torture by American generals during the Vietnam War It's use was strictly forbidden - with soldiers found guilty of using the technique facing swift court-martial.



How that position could have changed in the intervening forty years is beyond me. This was a favorite torture technique of the Pinochet regime and the Khmer Rouge - that in itself rules out any ambiguity for all but the most rational of people.

Was torture worth it?

Like in much of what they do, conservatives have a contradictory two-pronged defense regarding waterboarding. On the one hand, they argue that it's not torture. Then, they argue that torture like waterboarding would be acceptable, anyway, because the information gleaned from it helped defend America from terrorism.

Turning to John McCain once again - probably the best qualified man in America to discuss the reality of torture - he has only this to say:

"I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron.

Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.

It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers."

Certainly, the CIA operatives who 'waterboarded' 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed clearly weren't satisfied with the answers he gave. They were forced to waterboard him 183 times over the course of a single month. That's almost six times every single day.

An effective torture, one imagines, gets answers after only one judicious application.

Because Barack Obama has refused to declassify the information gleaned from waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, it's impossible to judge whether the techniques were 'worth it.' That being said, it's very doubtful that I'd change my mind on the subject, no matter what information had been gleaned.

As far as I'm concerned, when a country is reduced to torturing its prisoners for the sake of 'protecting the country' it's no longer much of a country worth protecting.

The Bottom Line

Of course, I still think America is worth protecting. However, I disagree completely with the path that the government went down following 9-11 and think that the discussion about the 'validity' of torture is totally bankrupt. Why are we defending the indefensible?

What the conservatives who defend waterboarding, Guantanemo Bay and 'enhanced interrogation techniques' fail to realise is that these 'techniques' are all so unequivocally unAmerican that it's a stain on this country's history that such abuses were ever condoned.

It doesn't matter whether or not the 'victims' of this torture were terrorists. That's backwards thinking, trying to argue that the ends justify unjustifiable means.

The fact is, Americans are meant to be the 'good guys' - and good guys don't do things like torture. Not because torture is illegal, or ineffective (although it's both) - but because it's wrong.

America is a nation founded on the ideals of justice and freedom. As a nation, we've always believed (rightly or wrongly) that there are some moral absolutes. Whether or not torture works should always be second to whether we want America to be known as a country that tortures.

We condemn foreign lands that commit torture. One of the justifications for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein brutally tormented his subjects in secret 'torture factories.'

So when we discuss the issue of 'waterboarding' and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' it's that we should be thinking about. Do we want to live in a country that commits the crimes Saddam Hussein was eventually hanged for?

I certainly don't - and I'm overjoyed that President Obama has exposed this scandal so we can make sure it's never repeated.

Oh, illegal immigration...

Oh, illegal immigration!

What a nightmare this farce is. It's the elephant in the living room every American is trying to ignore during their day-to-day existence - but arguing vocally about in the presidential debates and elsewhere.

The scope of the problem is far greater than most people are aware of. Take where I live, for example. In North Brunswick, the census reports a mere 10-15% of residents as being Hispanic in origin. If that's true, every single one of them must live on my street. Although some of my Hispanic neighbours are perfectly legal, there are others who speak no English and drive rickety old cars with out-of-state licence plates - making me highly dubious of their immigration status.

Not that they do us any harm. This is why I refer to them as 'an elephant in the living room.' In pubs and at dinner parties, I'm more than happy to rant about how unfair it is - but on a day-to-day basis, I smile and nod and ignore 'them' because they just seem like normal, peaceful, everyday people trying to make it like everybody else.

And that's the problem, really.

People like me, who topple just over the 'moderate' knife-edge towards liberalism, see illegal immigrants as regular folks who want to make a better life for themselves and their families. We live in the same communities as illegal immigrants and they do us no harm, except when we can't understand them (Carlos Mencia has a skit about the immigrants working at the local fast-food place saying "Weyo to Madonnas" instead of "Welcome to MacDonalds.")

However, there's a steady shift going on regarding people's attitudes to illegal immigration. The right wing has always gnashed their teeth at the thought of immigrants exploiting America's welcome policy. Now more and more left wing people seem to be joining them.

Events like this can't help:

At a recent protest for illegal immigrant rights, the arguments the illegals used shifted focus. Instead of the old cries - demanding the right to earn a decent wage and support their families - the illegal immigrants held up signs protesting America's very existence.

White people and Europeans (and presumably African American people as well, since we Europeans were responsible for 'importing' them) were genocidal invaders and the American nation was built on land that belonged to the native Americans and Mexicans.

In Texas, New Mexico and southern California, some illegal immigrants are explicitly declaring that this is THEIR land and the Americans living on it are the REAL illegal immigrants. They call themselves the 'reconquista' - a play on the Conquistadors who travelled from Spain to conquer the Americas five hundred years ago.

As far as the Right Wing is concerned, these protesters are no longer illegal immigrants, but an unofficial invading army.

With thanks to Jenn of Take A Stand Against Liberals. I shamelessly stole these photographs from her website while she was distracted by the oncoming California wildfires.

Independence Day and the right to Bear Fireworks

Today is a big day in the American calendar. The 4th of July celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when the fledgling United States of America officially declared their independence from British rule.

It's a national holiday, so I'm able to take a day off from pestering doctors and nurses with my fancy new drugs literature. However, like during most American holidays, the commercial monster doesn't let up and most of the shops and supermarkets are still open.

Since the first anniversary of independence, way back in 1777, fireworks have played a big part of the 4th July celebrations. And in a sketchy scheme straight out of the Dukes of Hazzard, local authorities are anxious to take their piece of the explosives pie.

In New Jersey, fireworks are illegal, plain and simple. You can't buy them. You can't transport them. You can't own them. Firing them off is a pretty risky operation, since the police will be on your doorstep in minutes.

The theory goes that banning fireworks will drive Jersey's residents to officially sanctioned events, like the Auten Road fireworks I blogged about a few days ago.

Yet in the spirit of American independence, residents support their right to bear fireworks as vehemently as their right to bear arms (which is another heavily restricted privilege in New Jersey.)

And this is where the whole operation starts to resemble Prohibition Era bootlegging more than fussy Government bureaucracy.

Because in neighbouring Pennsylvania, it's also illegal for residents to buy, transport, own or explode fireworks. Residents of Pennsylvania, that is. If a New Jersey resident crosses the state line and shows appropriate out-of-state I.D., they can pile up their SUV's with mountains of bottle rockets, M80s and other fireworks. The rule is that they have 24 hours to get them out of the state of Pennsylvania. Where they go and what happens to them... Well, if it's beyond the state line, that's not the authorities problem, is it?

So an emerging market has been created, driving residents of NJ across the state line to enormous fireworks warehouses. Here they can buy hundreds of pounds worth of explosives to take home and detonate in their gardens, just like the founding fathers did two hundred years ago.

Except of course, as soon as you cross the state line back home again, the boxes of bangers in your back seat immediately become illegal merchandise - and canny coppers are waiting to pounce on the border; arresting, impounding and seizing all the illegal merchandise.

Thanks to George Bush's anti terror legislation, you can even get busted on Conspiracy to Cause Explosions if you're carting enough firecrackers. With time behind bars, thousands of dollars worth of fines and the risk of losing your car or truck as deterrents, it's a pretty risky business.

But the challenge itself - and the principle of the matter (when it comes to explosives and guns, Americans stick to their principles) has led more and more New Jersey residents to run the gauntlet. Yesterday, the Home News Tribune reported over 50 arrests and 8,000 lbs of fireworks impounded by local Police in the last month alone.

It's almost as if the danger encourages people to do it. They cook up more and more complex schemes to avoid the Smokeys and get their illegal cargo home. From switching plates (Pennsylvania and New Jersey licence plates) to switching cars (renting them in Pennsylvania and leaving your Jersey car on the border) there are all sorts of permutations to be plotted to avoid the cops.

Yet police are getting more and more devious as well. The current plan is to leave an unmarked car in the Fireworks Warehouse parking lot and radio in the Jersey plates as and when they drive off. Police Cruisers will be waiting for the offenders as soon as they drive over the state lines.

It really is straight out of Smokey and the Bandit or the Dukes of Hazzard. It makes a mockery out of the law - which was pretty much a sham to begin with. Just like Boss Hogg's schemes were generally crooked ways to raise revenue, the more obscure state and county laws seem focused on massive fines and impounding property rather than protecting the public and serving the community.

One thing's for certain. Even the most law abiding New Jersey residents have a sneaking respect for the fireworks smugglers - and there will be far more fireworks displays this holiday weekend than the official ones sanctioned by the New Jersey authorities.