Hello John,

On Thu 2037-May-21 14:41, JOHN FITZGERALD (1:123/140) wrote to RICHARD WEBB:

I"ll do my best to be clear and lucid here, with some
interruptions, so bear with me if I get a bit overzealous
with the snippage.
JF> -


RS>   Jesse Ventura is making the rounds of talk shows, 

JF>     Do you really think Ventura would 'flat out' allow himself to be
JF> subjected to real torture?  Eyes poked out, fingers chopped off,
JF> teeth pulled, etc.

RW>  YEp, and thanks for helping to demonstrate a point that I've 
RW>  been trying to make in this echo as well.  Many
RW>  interrogation techniques might or might not be considered
RW>  torture depending on your working definition of the term.

JF>   Depending indeed.  Obviously waterboarding isn't anything that
JF> compares  to real torture, Ventura proves this definitively. (Thanks
JF> again, Ross.) 

BUt, this begs the question that I've not heard addressed,
except for by constitutional scholars and lawyers, and not
really in relation to this issue.

YOu know that having a polite little chat over a cup of
coffee isn't going to get what you seek from the bad guy.
But many interrogations methods which place the subject
under physical and emotional stress are proven to elicit
unreliable information.  SO, don't we really need to know
that if we're going to place physical or psychological
stresses on the subject we need to utilize those which are
most reliable.

DO we do research until we find the right chemical cocktail
to inject?  tHere are people wrongfully convicted of crimes
right here at home right now where the evidence against them was coerced
from parties placed under some serious stress
and their constitutional rights violated.  I'm honestly more concerned with
those folks getting justice than I am whether some qaeda grunt got
waterboarded.  WAs the info we got
from waterboarding the qaeda a{at}{at} the straight dope, and
could we use it to take some of them out?  IF so, cool!  IF
what we got was bs then we got nothing.


Hope I elucidated my point further.


Regards,
           Richard
--- timEd 1.10.y2k+