“journalist Mike Guy underwent waterboarding by a trained member of the U.S. military in the site’s new Lab Rat feature”
http://content1.clipmarks.com/content/7E8ADC46-F3DD-4D6F-B184-3A07CF501B7C/
This news just in, waterboarding not a pleasant experience…:rolleyes:
Christopher Hitchens underwent voluntary waterboarding last year and freaked out in about ten seconds.
You mean it’s not fun?! 
I have no desire to do it. I am interested though to know if you can create a pressure in your nose to postpone water entry. Kind of like you do if you lie face UP in a swimming pool. Create pressure in your nose to keep the water out.
Note I just said postpone…
The person doing it seems to indicate, it sets off involuntary responses similar, I assume, to a gag response (as example only) that the person has very little control over. I’m sure a person can be trained to resist/delay the response, but no doubt, you will have to take that breath be it 5 seconds or 2 minutes, and that does not include the stress response, etc one would experience who didn’t have the convenience of a “I don’t wanna play no more” thingy to drop.
Still seems a $hit load better then getting your head cut off, but we wont go there…
Exactly. He seemed to indicate it started with water in the nose which got me thinking about how to keep the water out of the nose.
But I agree, you might be able to train to postpone it. Not avoid it.
Thanks for the post. It was interesting to watch.
There are beter videos on that site by the way.
-Will
Are you condemning waterboarding? Just askin’.
All these journalists, despite their best efforts, are actually proving that it’s not torture.
NO ONE volunteers to subject themselves to torture.
Substitute “water boarding” for “electroshock” “cutting” or “caning” or “physical mutiliation” and I’m sure you get lots fewer volunteers…in fact I bet you get none.
FWIW:
I can understand when it’s been done to very senior criminal enemy combatants to save civilian lives. We really are better than they are.
And ( not but ) it’s not even in the same ballpark with a bunch of perverts using an electric drill on a random 20 year old just for fun.
have you personally been waterboarded?
everyone who has seems to disagree with you.
I have been “Hazed” pretty ‘harshly’ - that and I am sure that just a military PT test most journalists would consider TORTURE. Especially when it is a PERSONAL REFLECTION by their limited purile view.
-Will
Then why do we get a slew of journalists who repeatedly volunteer for it?
You don’t see many volunteering for thumb screws or the rack do you?
While it may not be pleasant, while it may be scary, it causes no permanent physical or psychological damage as proven by the video.
From Merriam’s
Main Entry: 1tor·ture
Pronunciation: \ˈtȯr-chər
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Old French, from Late Latin tortura, from Latin tortus, past participle of torquēre to twist; probably akin to Old High German drāhsil turner, Greek atraktos spindle
Date: 1540
1 a : anguish of body or mind : agony b : something that causes agony or pain
2 : the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure
My understanding is that the purpose is to make the person being water boarded feel as though they are drowning, causing a panic response and eventually a desire to do pretty much anything (ex. giving up info they’d rather not) to get it to stop.
This would not fall under any rational definition of torture, since it doesn’t involve actual drowning, i.e. actual death or long-term physical injury, but rather panic due to feeling of drowning, i.e. there is little to no risk of actual death, and death is definitely not the purpose or goal…
Obviously, it would likely be a horrible experience, but there are lots of horrible experiences that cannot be defined as torture.
IMO it is torture in the strictest sense of the word, however, I agree that all of the journalist signing up to go through it just shows that the “long-term” damage is non-existent.
I’m all for it when it’s use is controlled.
Yeah it would suck and be pretty intense, but as was stated earlier, your head, hands, fingers, etc are still attached.
…your intestines are still in your abdominal cavity, you do not have a glass rod shattered in your urethra, you do not have 16p nails in any major or minor joints. you have no extra holes in your testicles, and you are not crippled through racking.
I am not arguing for or against either side here.
I’m curious, however, if some people in this thread truly think that a few seconds of this procedure (in which the subject has no fear of those carrying out the test) has the same mental effect on a human being as hours of the same treatment in which the subject is questioning whether or not he’ll make it.
In my mind, saying that any of these journalists’ experience is relevant to mental implications is akin to having a subject take one puff on a cigarette and then claiming that you now have a decent sample to represent smokers.
Again, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I at least think we should look at the differences between a controlled experiment, short in duration, versus a technique that was sometimes used for much longer durations and without the same mental safety net.
He should have kept his pie-hole shut beforehand; that way he wouldn’t look like such a tool.
Again, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I at least think we should look at the differences between a controlled experiment, short in duration, versus a technique that was sometimes used for much longer durations and without the same mental safety net.
Maybe something like being dunked under water as a kid until the point of panic and real fear of drowning…Coughing up water…And then being dunked some more?
Definately not pleasant.But torture?
I just thought it was called a weekend.
…Maybe i’m way off in my idea of waterboarding.
I was waterboarded while I was in the Marine Corps in 1989.
It was during a POW course. We were picked up, stripped, put in orange pj’s and blind folded. Got driven to god knows where on Camp Lejeune.
During the day the" instructors" were “Russian”, during the night another fresh group of “instructors” were “Arabic”.
It was a five day and night course. One night I got snatched up while I was asleep.
I was taken to the interogation tent hung upside down and then waterboarded.
They put a tshirt over my mouth and nose and let the water flow.
It wasnt fun by any means. But I wouldnt call it torture.
Torture would be to have your head cut off with a rusty, dull knife like our enemies do to civilians that they capture and put it on the internet.
It was proven that waterboarding SAVED AMERICAN LIVES, both miltary, and civilian.
That should be the only concern anyone has.