Waterboarding sounds like fun

[ariellyn]

Well...maybe not "fun" fun, but not that harmful. Sounds like skiing or or something.

Words/names speak volumes.

I have been hearing the word waterboarding on AAR and here for a while. I didn't find out what it means until I saw a picture here at DU and then did some Googling myself. The lengthiest explanation of waterboarding that I had heard prior to seeing that picture here was that it was a "simulated drowning technique." Nothing I had heard bespoke the horror of this torture technique.

To put a person, head down, on a board tilted at a 45-degree angle, and pour a continuous stream of water over their mouth and nose leaving them fighting for their breath when they are also more than likely sleep deprived and sensory deprived...death would definitely be an outcome here.

If I, in my mind conjured up benign images of somebody being dunked in and out of a pool of water in my effort to make sense of waterboarding, I can only imagine how many other Americans don't think torture--especially waterboarding--is that harmful.

Information about torture needs to be communicated better is my point. Especially when you have people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity advocating and minimizing it.

[helderheid]

1. anyone here speak swedish?

[ariellyn]

2. Why do you ask? n/t

[helderheid]

4. because the cartoon I posted comes from an .se address and I

can't understand the language.

[ariellyn]

5. Oh. For some reason, the cartoon didn't show at all on my

computer. All I see is the box with the X in the corner.

[uppityperson]

7. the picture in post has Swedish writing.

CLick on the (nonvisible) picture link, view picture.

[Nailzberg]

11. This is past my comprehension.

I think Condi is saying that "He has already disclosed that bin laden entered hiding dressed as the pope with Elvis." "If we drown him again (nearly) he'll tell us where Saddam hid the WMDs"

(Just reminding you, my swedish is sad.)

Bush is even harder for me to understand. Something about the methods used by the vatican during the Inquisition, so calling it torture is unfair.

Like I said, best guess, I'm sure I'll be corrected.

[helderheid]

12. thanks!

[pooja]

3. Last Saturday... the Local times here ran an in-depth article

on the torture methods ole' Georgie and gang admit to using. Full description and with pictures explaining the techniques. Personally, I would like to set up a waterboarding station at a demonstration site and ask people to try it. Once enough people understand this, they won't think it like taking a trip to the water park and going down the slide backwards.

[ariellyn]

6. This would be an excellent protest feature--demonstrate waterboarding

during protests. That would open some eyes.

[pooja]

8. It would be relativel easy to set up... Damn now I'm going to sound

as sadist as these other assholes... Anyway get a kiddie pool, one of those pumps they use in fountains, and a park bench.

And then welcome to the freak show. Step right up $2.00 to participate--for every minute you last, we'll pay you double back.

[Kingshakabobo]

9. We should invite republicans to see how long it takes ......

......to renounce god, country and party. We can demonstrate how long it takes to get "the answer you want to hear."

Too bad someone in the media doesn't put out a reward for republicans that want to put their money where their mouth is.

[BadgerKid]

10. In the interest of public education

would it make sense to do a live internet broadcast, or make a video available? Maybe MAYBE some people might understand the diff between voluntary actors and involuntary torturees.

[Berry Cool]

13. Apparently, some people think waterboarding is something akin to

the big guys at the local pool grabbing the nerd and holding him underwater until he cries uncle. Or at worst, a swirly.

Maybe that's part of the reason they don't get angrier about torture. The thought of REAL torture is so alien to them that they simply can't relate to it. So their mind fills up with the closest things to it that they know of or have seen or experienced or heard about, like high school hijinks and college hazing pranks and anything popular kids do to pick on the unpopular. Not that there haven't been some horrible, and even death-inducing, examples of those. But look at how hard it has been to get anyone to take THOSE seriously as a problem. Look at how long it took us to start caring seriously about the bullying of innocent kids in our schools, or about hazing initiations that went too far. Look at all the time society said "Kids will be kids," or "You have to be tough in order to earn your place as 'one of the gang.' That's just the way it is."

If we couldn't work up a head of indignation about those practices--and some people STILL can't--how do we expect them to get angry about torture of possibly innocent, possibly guilty prisoners? How do we remind them that one of the great things we have taken for granted in America is that we are innocent until proven guilty, and why that is a good thing? How do we remind them that one of the reasons America is great is because we never questioned people by subjecting them to the rack, the iron maiden and the scavenger's daughter? And that we came up with a form of government in which we didn't do that precisely BECAUSE it was done in places like England and we didn't want to be like that?

Maybe we need to educate people better about world history, not just American history. To many of these people, Iron Maiden is just a metal band. To many of them, there is no difference between some "foreigner" in a prisoner being tortured, and some guy being forced into a chugging contest because he's a pledge at Tappa Kega Beer. They just don't get it.