Monday, April 20, 2009

Waterboarding used 266 times

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported. The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative. A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew. The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known.

What are your reactions to these harsh acts of interogation? Do you support this? Is there alternate ways to get information?

6 comments:

  1. I think that tthis is a horrible torture method used to get information. I believe there are many other ways to get information from prisoners you are interrogating. To me the fact that it is "near drowning" is enough to put a stop to it. I don't know everything about it but I would assume it has been pushed and pushed to the point that someone had been killed by it.

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  2. Unlike Taylor i support the method of water boarding. This is a great way to get information from a person who has done something extremely wrong. This method of torture must be a great way to get information during interrogation because it is the most widespread method of torture, but i do believe that this method should be used after other methods are used first and no information is gathered from the informant.

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  3. I believe that water boarding is possibly one of the worst ways to torture people. there are other ways to interrogate people, many of which do not include torture at all. if the use of a truth serum does not work, then maybe a different tactic or serum is needed, but nearly killing a person is never necessary.

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  4. I agree with everyone's comments so far on this article. In my eyes, waterboarding is definetly the worst if not the worst form of torture. Alot of people say that drowning is the worst way to die because it is slow and your are constantly fighting to almost stay alive. So a "drowning simulation" is just an awful thing to do. But like Brad said, this can be a great way to get answers from someone. But I am sure that there are many other ways to recieve info during an interrogation that don't involve violence, just like Matt said.

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  5. I belive that this method of getting prisoners to speak is in-humane. I agree with taylor on the fact that there are many other ways to get prisoners to talk, and torture is certainly not right. waterboarding may be considered a good and harmless way but personally i cannot stand the thought of drowning, and this paractice should not be done by the U.S.

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  6. yeah i agree with sonic to about it being a horrible torture method, but this is the first time for me hearing about this type of torture. So Im kinda interested on how it done

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