Robert Hurley (29):
From a moral point of view, however, waterboarding is torture. It degrades the prisoner and the torturer.
Will you please explain why degredation is bad? The usual definitions of torture involve permement physiological and/or psychological harm, i.e. chopping bits of slowly, electrical shock to sensitive areas, burning, raping, crushing of thumbs in screws, stretching on the rack, etc. Degredation uses a prisoner’s sense of shame against him, but there is no permenent damage.
Generally speaking degredation is the only way to get these people to talk. Remember, these are not criminals, they are trained warriers. A criminal knows that he is acting against his own society’s code of ethics and deserves to be punished. They also tend to be somewhat stupid. These jihadi’s are neither: they are usually quite intelligent and well educated and they are acting in full accordance with their own society’s code of honor and ethics. They are also usually trained to resist conventional interrogation techniques (That’s what terrorist training camps do, after all: train terrorists).
