I hated SERE School.

EOM

TJ you are welcome as welcome as anyone else and we’d be happy with your company. I try very hard not to be the first person to use vitriol, even though I’m not above responding in kind. And thanks for your kind words.

and you are a DAMN good writer. I do NOT agree with you, but I hear you.

Have you ever read my favorite novel War and Peace? Prince Andrei makes a convincing case that if we fought wars without any sentimentality we would soon have no wars. Andrei is the ultimate realist and he was probably thinking only of European Wars in the 18th Century, but there is a point there.

And you are correct about what I would do to defend those I love. I hope I would commit sin after sin to defend my family. I hope I would shock anyone who attacked people I love with my ferocity. I know the reasons armies don’t allow such ferocity is that a disciplined attack wins on a greater overall percentage.

I am not more PURE than you; I am not better than you. I am afraid of how easily people say “Torture is bad and unacceptable…..BUT”

I read your original post and the 100 comments that you referred me to .

It is odd stuff to have a successful blog like yours, very much democracy in action and I am happy for you that you have so many writers and very much grateful to you for this interchange.

I think I hear your voice and I think we agree that anyone who lightly talks about committing torture is crazy and I see your point that anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that there are theoretical situations where a moral person would is also crazy.

Hiroshima WAS better than the alternative and Hiroshima was a great awful act of war.

Anyway, as long as you don’t put up a sign that says “Liberals not welcome” I will be a reader.
You write well. You write crazy well, and remember I don’t agree with you here and I find your vitriol a tad off-putting, so this compliment comes from way over on the other side.

Thank you.

Unless I may have missed it, I cannot believe no one has yet referenced the experienced and expert interrogator, Malcom Nance on the hardly leftist and esteemed Small Wars Journal Blog. This former Chief of Training at SERE school has stated under oath in Congressional testimony that waterboarding is indeed torture. Many other experts, including former POW Senator John McCain and Marine Corp pilot and prosecutor, LTC Stuart Couch support this stance against waterboarding.

I have never personally experienced waterboarding. But I have observed it personally at close quarters a number of times. And I know some who have experienced it far from the ‘friendly’ confines of SERE School and far from ‘other’ friendly training venues – those who have experienced it in enemy confinement and truly in fear of their lives (yes, it does make a huge difference).

Waterboarding, done outside of an afternoon training exercise, (and maybe even within) is indeed torture by any and all definitions! The conclusion of our military and other experts is that waterboarding should be defined as torture and thus illegal, as should befit our advanced nation, civilization, treaties, law, and conventions.

[Nevertheless, if I were the most highly trained and experienced interrogator in an extreme and remote, ticking bomb situation, it "might" behoove me in my professional opinion – if all else failed, and fully knowing torture intelligence limitations - to personally and purposely break the law in this most extreme instance, to save a great number of people if a waterboarding victim could – in my estimation - ever give real intelligence – which since the Inquisition has proven to be doubtful… I might do it …. Albeit breaking a law I support. Then a trial would determine whether my torture was justified or not. But all this happens in novels and TV, and rarely if ever in real life.]

It is far better to make something illegal (waterboarding) at the outset. Thus it makes it a limit except for only the most very bold and self-assured to ever breach…and then hopefully under extreme and hopefully justifiable circumstances (yet still breaching the precepts this nation was founded upon), than to make waterboarding now very legal and easy, and give carte blanche to any and every untrained E-2 non-swimmer ersatz interrogator to legally give waterboarding or worse to any and all capturees. Are we either a civil nation of laws and better than our adversaries, or merely hangmen and sadists who want jungle rules as we please?

But it did get me thinking again about water boarding. I agree completely that its gotten ridiculous what people are attempting to label as “torture” now. In my view, anything that the courts consider acceptable for our domestic law enforcement can’t possibly be turned into “torture” just because its the military doing it. And let’s get real, the military are acting in a much more dangerous and compelling environment than domestic law enforcement is.

But its the water boarding thing I wonder about. I don’t think anybody is going to actually suggest with a straight face that the courts would be accepting of water boarding as a domestic interrogation technique. Not unless we were under a state of martial law or something like that. And I’m not so sure they would even then. I realize that what was portrayed on the video might well have been greatly exaggerated. But even putting that aside, just based on my prior understanding of what’s involved, I’m pretty sure that if it doesn’t qualify as “torture”, its damm close.

Correct me if I’m wrong (I know someone will) but I think, if you keep it up long enough, you can actually kill the person. And even if there is no actual danger to the person’s life, as I understand it, from the point of view of the ‘victim’, its definitely perceived as otherwise. And I can’t quite see how/why the fact that its done in SERE training (where at least there wouldn’t be any ‘real’ physical danger because it wouldn’t be taken that far) changes its character. Its training. So you can test yourself and learn how to react/respond. In case you are ever captured. And tortured. No?

Anyway, personally, I think water boarding either qualifies as torture or comes awful close. But the question of whether it could be acceptable in certain circumstances is a whole other issue. Again, speaking personally, I think it just might be.