Times reporter trying to explain away torture on C-SPAN now

[Skidmore]

along with Connie coaching him. They don't understand what "waterboarding" is after all these months. Hope someone calls in who can and calls them on some of the spin.

[katinmn]

1. Someone needs to start a 12-step program for journalists

Apologizing for Bush has become a deeply ingrained habit!

[frankly_fedup2]

2. I do not understand why anyone is surprised that prisoners have been

tortured by the U.S.

I'm sure our government had our military or sent special military in to torture prisoners in every war we have had. It's abhorable; however, I have no doubt in my mind.

OOps, forgot my question. Has the Red Cross been allowed in to see the prisoners? Aren't they suppose to be able to do that anywhere during war per the Geneva Convention? Did Bush say that the Geneva Convention's laws did not apply to the prisoners at Gitmo?

[LaurenG]

3. I was listening to NPR yesterday

and a thought occurred to me. Why don't we use truth serum, sodium pentathol, or something like that. Is it not effective? Does anyone know?

[evermind]

4. What I would like to see is a voice stress analysis feature

on domestic TVs. A little red light would go on, or "lying!" flash up at the bottom of the screen

This is getting on to being possible (though I imagine there are calibration difficulties) right now.

See, for example, the introduction at http://campus.umr.edu/police/cvsa/patflood.htm

A new tool has been introduced that assists law enforcement in determining the truthfulness of people making oral statements: the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA). The CVSA has proven itself to be a valuable tool for law enforcement agencies because of it's cost effectiveness. The CVSA may change the way law enforcement approaches the business of finding the truth from the spoken word.

The CVSA has definite benefits such as it: does not require a lengthy discussion of the questions used (is not restricted to "yes" or "no" answers, but rather can analyze any spoken word, or even a dull groan); eliminates the frustrating "inconclusive results" category that oftentimes was the finding of a polygraph examination; is not affected by the subject's age, medical condition, or history of drug use and can be used to analyze audio and video tapes for truth verification.

The CVSA works simply by measuring the tremors in the voice. When people lie, they place themselves under stress which causes a reaction in the autonomic nervous system. Under stress, the body prepares for an emergency which causes the blood to rush away from the limbs, and the muscles to tense. Since the vocal cords are principally muscle tissue, they too, tighten, causing sub-audible changes in the voice. These tiny changes of frequency modulations that occur in every human voice are called micro-tremors.

The variance in these inaudible and involuntary modulations are measured by the CVSA, and the results determine if a person is lying or telling the truth.

Now if you could get some Free software to do this, you could already have a crack at having it analyse the output of your TV or radio - an invaluable adjunct to political viewing/listening I think!

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Are you kidding?

That wouldn't be any fun at all.

:sarcasm off:

Torturing prisioners has little to do with finding out the truth.