Bush trying to keep waterboarding

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by pgardn

One question that has been answered
but is not widely publicized is:

Does waterboarding actually yield good quick information?

And the answer appears to be in some cases
it works very well in extracting information quickly.

So President Scuds sits in the Oval Office:

Pres. Scuds, we have information about a terrorist
attack in LA. It looks like a big network and we dont
know where the hell they are in LA, but its going to
be real bad as it involves a dirty nuke. We do have
suspects in the planning in custody. The attack appears
to be imminent. We think waterboarding will possibly work
on one of these guys. We need info NOW. And this guy has
the goods. He knows. It might work... We have tried other
quick techniques on this guy and its not working.

Does this situation arise often? NO. But if it does,
do you want to leave the option open?

So do you want to say we will prohibit this practice unless
we see a dire need to do it, or just flat out prohibit KNOWING
that it IS effective at getting vital information quickly IN SOME
cases?

And of course we prohibit it completely because we
know it will be abused by Bush and his Cowboy military...
And because we cant set proper criteria when it should
be used.
They are holding a gun to your head, tell the
Cops to back off and let them kill you...take one
for the country and ethics.

i've always thought that torture may well yield what you want the person to tell you, not necessarily the truth. to this day you have people who give false confessions due to hours upon hours of questioning by the police. why wouldn't this be different?
i don't know what the cia uses vs the military. i'd hate to see limits placed that shouldn't be placed by congress, but whether that's the case here, i don't know. i don't want this country to become exactly the type of thing it is supposedly fighting.