Two levels of irony of waterboarding

Started here systematically reading “Huffington press” – thinking that maybe it will allow me to develop my language skills a bit…

The hot topic there nowadays is waterboarding – can it be really considered torture or not? And if this is torture, is it really acceptable to use torture against enemies of the State – for the sake of getting a piece of information regarding a forthcoming terroristic act, etc. etc.?

Well, Geneva conventions forbid torture even during war times, and US signed those conventions. Also, there are many examples in the history of US when people have been put to jail (or to death ) for torturing.

But surprisingly after a bit of thinking one finds that the ultimate truth is somewhat trickier than that and may even contain several levels of irony in it (you know how much I love irony).

And here is the first level. In US militiary, spec ops have a possibility to go through so called “torture training” (as far as I understand, the training is really optional). The idea is that a trainee is subjected to some kind of “simplified” torture procedures in order to increase his psychological stability under torture (just in case – what if the person gets captured during an operation and tortured?). The “torture training” procedures are planned and preformed in a way allowing to minimize any personal injuries of the “tortured” – that is, guys don’t have their nails teared out or the trainer hits the guy’s head against the rubber (not stone) wall (lol) etc. etc., you’ve got the idea.

This was exactly the program recommended after 9-11 to use against terrorists/enemies of the state who might have provided some valuable information concerning bin Laden & Co – since “something we use during our own soldiers’ training is certainly Ok to use against enemies of the State” (although there is of course a primary difference between the situation when a “tortured” person can make a sign calling to stop the procedure and when a “tortured” person does not have this possibility).

The second level of irony is that this very program was developed on the basis of certain Chinese manuals, used by North Korean and Vietnamese torturers back in 1950s-60s. As one understands, the main goal of that “Chinese torture program” wasn’t really getting some valuable information from the tortured. Instead, the goal was to break the tortured to use him later in propaganda wars – “broken” soldiers and officers were typically featured on certain tapes where they sweared allegance to communism and condemned capitalist-imperialist pigs. That’s why torture could not really mean any injury – a turned to the dark side should have looked and sounded presentably.

In this respect, I think, liberals correctly suppose that waterboarding and other interesting practices were really used to get additional points in the propaganda war, instead of getting information.

Via Boris Ivanov.