LOL
It has nothing to with the fear of water, and everything to do with the fact that you're being slowly drowned.
Don't fool yourself; you'd crack in seconds, just like everyone else.
Obama releases Bush torture memos
- Thread starter Sankari
- Start date
LOL
It has nothing to with the fear of water, and everything to do with the fact that you're being slowly drowned.
Don't fool yourself; you'd crack in seconds, just like everyone else.
Wizard Keyaz, I can say that thankfully I have never been subjected to torture.
Baz047, thats the chinese water torture and not waterboarding - both are effective but water torture takes a lot longer.
The problem with any form of torture is that it cannot be proven one way or another. If the torturer believes the person knows the information they want, but the person who is being subjected to does not know the information how can the position ever be resolved?
AMP34, you are perfectly entitled to think you will be able to resist waterboarding and like all people on this forum I hope you would never have to experience it.
People often use words like "but they know they aren't going to kill them". Imagine you are being strapped down, and have a hood over your head. Yes your fine, you know its just a test, they are just trying to scare you.
Next they place a towel over your head and hold it down, this combined with the strapping on your chest makes breathing a bit harder, but you tell yourself to keep calm, its only a test.
Then comes the first splash of water, its uncomfortable but you still have good air in your lungsm so you can hold your breath for a while.
Then comes the next splash, now the towel is getting saturated and you cant really breath, yes its a test, you keep calm, but that breath is starting to run out.
All of a sudden the next splash comes on and that fight or flight instinct imbedded in every human psyche starts to come to the fore. Only you are strapped down and cant fight, you start to move but are restricted, the more you move the more you panic.
Yes deep down you are trying to convince yourself that this is just a test, only you have a deep instinct fighting you and then doubt will start to creep in and you will remember that accidents can and do happen. They dont realise that they have used too much water, that the water is entering your lungs, that you cant breath.
Chances are it will take no more than 30 seconds to get from the start to the end.
Now imagine being promised that will happen again and again, only its not a test, you have been lifted becuase military intelligence have evidence that you know something. Only you dont. The intelligence is flawed, but the people torturing you dont know that. How do you convince them?
Very shortly even the sight of the towel or water being splashed on your face will send you in to fits of panic.
And its for that reason that torture is wrong, just like the death penalty it can never be undone.
Baz047, thats the chinese water torture and not waterboarding - both are effective but water torture takes a lot longer.
The problem with any form of torture is that it cannot be proven one way or another. If the torturer believes the person knows the information they want, but the person who is being subjected to does not know the information how can the position ever be resolved?
AMP34, you are perfectly entitled to think you will be able to resist waterboarding and like all people on this forum I hope you would never have to experience it.
People often use words like "but they know they aren't going to kill them". Imagine you are being strapped down, and have a hood over your head. Yes your fine, you know its just a test, they are just trying to scare you.
Next they place a towel over your head and hold it down, this combined with the strapping on your chest makes breathing a bit harder, but you tell yourself to keep calm, its only a test.
Then comes the first splash of water, its uncomfortable but you still have good air in your lungsm so you can hold your breath for a while.
Then comes the next splash, now the towel is getting saturated and you cant really breath, yes its a test, you keep calm, but that breath is starting to run out.
All of a sudden the next splash comes on and that fight or flight instinct imbedded in every human psyche starts to come to the fore. Only you are strapped down and cant fight, you start to move but are restricted, the more you move the more you panic.
Yes deep down you are trying to convince yourself that this is just a test, only you have a deep instinct fighting you and then doubt will start to creep in and you will remember that accidents can and do happen. They dont realise that they have used too much water, that the water is entering your lungs, that you cant breath.
Chances are it will take no more than 30 seconds to get from the start to the end.
Now imagine being promised that will happen again and again, only its not a test, you have been lifted becuase military intelligence have evidence that you know something. Only you dont. The intelligence is flawed, but the people torturing you dont know that. How do you convince them?
Very shortly even the sight of the towel or water being splashed on your face will send you in to fits of panic.
And its for that reason that torture is wrong, just like the death penalty it can never be undone.
An interesting and powerful description of the effects of waterboarding, self-inflicted: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448717
It is torture.
It is torture.
That doesn't mean I woundn't give up after a while, just stating i'm sure I would last longer than 15 seconds (ie longer than the bloke in vanity fair), but I would give it a good go, with certain points (that I stated in my post, which you didn't appear to read properly?), that I knew it wasn't actually going to kill me...
Even people who are willing to blow themselves up and die for their cause? As I stated in my other post I highly doubt the 14 second time and the "everyone" statement. If that were the case why not do it on everyone as they come in? No need for extensive weeks of interrogation or other forms of torture. There is a reason (or several) for that, some people will last a huge amount longer and probably more importantly they have already been worn down by other forms of torture and non torture techniques.
As i've already commented in my previous post i'm not going to respond to that other than ask you to actually reply to the other parts of that post, the ones you cna't just LOL at.
That's a good description and one that describes perfectly how it is almost entirely a psycological form of torture, which can (if you know what it is) mean you can last several minutes (and even beat it). Like all forms of psycological torture you can be trained to beat it (or more reasonably delay it, experienced military personel trained in anti torture are only asked to hold out for 24 hours). Some people last longer with psycological torture than others by default and some will last longer with physical torture.
Psychological torture is far harder to resist than physical torture.
Unfortunately, you seem to have missed my point entirely. Your reasoning is based on the premise that you will always be able to convince yourself that they do not intend to kill you.
A Torturer will keep on pouring the water on and restrict your ability to breath until you either panic / crack or until you drown because you failed to panic at all.
They use it because it is effective in breaking people - its effectiveness at breaking people is not in doubt. The question is whether they get any useful intelligence as a result of breaking them.
You also missed my point, it depends entirely on the person, psychological torture can work better on some people than physical torture and visa versa, which is why a combination of both (and multiple types thereof) is used.
My reasoning is based on the same reasoning that people can beat lie detectors, training in calming and controlling your mind helps in situations like this.
"Or until you drown"? Unlikely in a test (with respect to what I was talking about) or in interrogations by a western power under controlled circumstances.
It is effective at breaking people, I have no doubt, and never said otherwise, but not necessaily everyone, and not necessarily on its own in the timeframes talked about here.
But yes I agree with you about the quality of information extracted.
Associate
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Of course - I wasn't trying to suggest torture isn't effective at extracting information. It undoubtedly is.
The problem is the 'Catch 22' it presents, that is, how can you tell someone hasn't got any information to give, or alternatively is simply iron willed enough to suffer the abuse without cracking. This is the reason that torture is not, and should not be, acceptable.
Yo
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448717
It's physical AND psychological. Yes, you may be some kind of mutant without a drowning reflex; but most of us aren't.
I am sure we would all love to put that to the test. Care to prove it?
Soldato
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Read this for some comment on the subject.
Cool, will "Iron" platinum87 resist a bumming?
Yeah! You go girl!
i always thought 24 was a good perspective to this, in the sense of if torture is needed or not and im with jack all the way! If someone knows of some attack and holds vital information to save lives then sure its needed.
Soldato
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Yeah, but in his case everyone he tortures just so happens to be a terrorist, he's never wrong so you can always support his actions. But in real life you can't know the person you're torturing is guilty before you torture them, or be sure they're not just trying to make you stop when they admit to all their crimes.
Is that "truth serum" real? The soduim pentawhatsit? If there is such a drug why don't they just use that instead of risking the health and mental wellbeing of innocent people.
I can't condone torture, I really want there to be a better way. To me it just seems like an excuse for twisted people to hurt others and be rewarded for it. Anybody who will willingly inflict torture should not be allowed to do so.
yea i wouldnt last long, when im standing in the shower facing the shower head sometimes i get the drowning panic feeling so i have to turn around.
white noise, walling , crouch position probably wouldnt work on me to well but the inects would
I've just found this thread almost by accident and it's actually been quite a good read for GD. Pretty much all torture is, to a certain extent, psychological.
The first stage is humiliation. You will be stripped and laughed at. You may be fat, have a small penis, a big arse. It doesn't matter, they'll point it out in very unfavourable terms. 99.9% of all torture victims are tortured naked. Clothing just gets in the way, although sometimes clothing is given back to subjects to start a process of empathy with the interrogator. Then you are typically raped. Male or female, it makes no odds. That's probably all happened still inside the first 24 hours once it has been decided you're going to give them some information.
You're on your own, you're cold, naked and you've just been used as a sextoy by a bunch of people you don't know. If you weren't scared before, you are now.
Then they'll probably stress you a bit. Extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation, stress positions to make you very uncomfortable.
Then, once you're softened up (and that's just the softening up), someone will come and prep you.
When the interrogators first prep you, they suggest various possible outcomes and they watch to see which make you flinch more than the others.
Some people really fear fire, some fear disfigurement, blindness or deafness, the mutilation of their genitals, rats, insects, spiders - it could be anything.
These are all basically psychological tortures.
One of the Tornado pilots shot down over Iraq in the first Gulf War cracked when they put tissue paper under his armpit and lit it. They'd beaten him for 12 hours straight and he'd just taken it. The burning tissue didn't actually hurt him, it's just that he had an absolute terror of burning in his cockpit and this was his nightmare scenario. They were going to burn him to death. One bit at a time. Not so scary eh? Well, it scared the living daylights out of him.
Most people can be trained to resist pain. In fact, after a while you stop feeling it, which is why they only do a little bit at a time. The fear of what's coming next is what they are working with, not the pain itself. It's almost all psychological, unless of course they're just doing it for sadistic purposes in which case they've already got the battery firmly clamped to your testicles and you've bitten your own tongue off because your jaw is spasming involuntarily...
As for the person who said anyone who wanted to torture someone shouldn't be allowed to do it, it's not quite that easy. You see, to torture someone, you have to be able to completely dissociate yourself from what you are doing, and you need to be in the frame of mind where you don't mind hearing a lot of screaming and begging. It's actually quite hard.
Interrogators/Torturers generally undergo 18-24 months of 'training' where they are themselves brutalised and dehumanised to the extent that they don't care. It's not that they want to do it or not, it's just the job they do. The same way you and I go to the office, they go to the torture chamber and do horrible things to others. It's normal. Then they go home and have a nice evening with their families. That's how their life is.
And anyone who says they didn't crack is a liar. Everyone cracks, It just needs time and creativity on the part of the interrogator to crack the subject.
Every RAF pilot undergoes survival and evasion training, part of which is to be 'interrogated' by Military Intelligence officers if they get captured (and most get captured). The rules for those interrogations are explained to everyone before the exercise and it's understood that the interrogators will be allowed some leeway but the pilots are all told what the interrogators can't or won't do. They're not allowed to use any really heavy physical torture as such, but psychological stuff is just fine. All those subjects also know they have a fixed time at which point the exercise will end and they get to go home. As far as I'm aware, most crack and give it all up pretty quickly. When they realise that the person they are dealing with is doing a job and that job is to get them to talk, they talk rather than undergo any further abuse.
Any good interrogator doesn't need to physically touch you to make you feel dread. Your imagination does the rest. Think about the final torture scene in 1984. The rat can't actually touch Winston, but because he's so frightened of rats, he gives them the most precious thing he has - Julia.
Torture? No problem!
The first stage is humiliation. You will be stripped and laughed at. You may be fat, have a small penis, a big arse. It doesn't matter, they'll point it out in very unfavourable terms. 99.9% of all torture victims are tortured naked. Clothing just gets in the way, although sometimes clothing is given back to subjects to start a process of empathy with the interrogator. Then you are typically raped. Male or female, it makes no odds. That's probably all happened still inside the first 24 hours once it has been decided you're going to give them some information.
You're on your own, you're cold, naked and you've just been used as a sextoy by a bunch of people you don't know. If you weren't scared before, you are now.
Then they'll probably stress you a bit. Extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation, stress positions to make you very uncomfortable.
Then, once you're softened up (and that's just the softening up), someone will come and prep you.
When the interrogators first prep you, they suggest various possible outcomes and they watch to see which make you flinch more than the others.
Some people really fear fire, some fear disfigurement, blindness or deafness, the mutilation of their genitals, rats, insects, spiders - it could be anything.
These are all basically psychological tortures.
One of the Tornado pilots shot down over Iraq in the first Gulf War cracked when they put tissue paper under his armpit and lit it. They'd beaten him for 12 hours straight and he'd just taken it. The burning tissue didn't actually hurt him, it's just that he had an absolute terror of burning in his cockpit and this was his nightmare scenario. They were going to burn him to death. One bit at a time. Not so scary eh? Well, it scared the living daylights out of him.
Most people can be trained to resist pain. In fact, after a while you stop feeling it, which is why they only do a little bit at a time. The fear of what's coming next is what they are working with, not the pain itself. It's almost all psychological, unless of course they're just doing it for sadistic purposes in which case they've already got the battery firmly clamped to your testicles and you've bitten your own tongue off because your jaw is spasming involuntarily...
As for the person who said anyone who wanted to torture someone shouldn't be allowed to do it, it's not quite that easy. You see, to torture someone, you have to be able to completely dissociate yourself from what you are doing, and you need to be in the frame of mind where you don't mind hearing a lot of screaming and begging. It's actually quite hard.
Interrogators/Torturers generally undergo 18-24 months of 'training' where they are themselves brutalised and dehumanised to the extent that they don't care. It's not that they want to do it or not, it's just the job they do. The same way you and I go to the office, they go to the torture chamber and do horrible things to others. It's normal. Then they go home and have a nice evening with their families. That's how their life is.
And anyone who says they didn't crack is a liar. Everyone cracks, It just needs time and creativity on the part of the interrogator to crack the subject.
Every RAF pilot undergoes survival and evasion training, part of which is to be 'interrogated' by Military Intelligence officers if they get captured (and most get captured). The rules for those interrogations are explained to everyone before the exercise and it's understood that the interrogators will be allowed some leeway but the pilots are all told what the interrogators can't or won't do. They're not allowed to use any really heavy physical torture as such, but psychological stuff is just fine. All those subjects also know they have a fixed time at which point the exercise will end and they get to go home. As far as I'm aware, most crack and give it all up pretty quickly. When they realise that the person they are dealing with is doing a job and that job is to get them to talk, they talk rather than undergo any further abuse.
Any good interrogator doesn't need to physically touch you to make you feel dread. Your imagination does the rest. Think about the final torture scene in 1984. The rat can't actually touch Winston, but because he's so frightened of rats, he gives them the most precious thing he has - Julia.
Torture? No problem!