[vulturesrow]

My two cents:

There is a line and it is reasonable to have a debate about it. My personal opinion is that waterboarding doesnt cross that line. I have plenty of friends that got to experience going through SERE (Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion) training. I didnt get the waterboard, but I got to experience some other "fun" things. All the guys I knew agree it sucks hard. But because it doesnt do physical damage and because it is very safe and its effective, I consider an acceptabe, if distasteful, interrogation procedure.

On effectiveness of torture: Read some books on the POW experience and tell me that physical torture cant be effective. Yes it has a much higher likelihood of obtaining false information but not always. And I find this particular line of argument to be a non-sequitur because I find it hard to believe that anyone who is opposed to any sort of torture would suddenly have a change of heart if physical torture reached a certain level of effectiveness.

I'm pretty sure its something I understand as well as anyone on this board. I've done a lot of reading the POW experience in Vietnam and as a military aviator I have a great appreciation for the fact that I could very easily be at the receiving end of interrogation and torture. With all due respect to John McCain, I simply cannot place the practice of waterboarding on par with the things he experienced in Vietnam.

BTW, if anyone is interested in the subject of interrogation, there is a good book written by an Army interrogator, the name of the book is "The Interrogators". He presents a fairly non-partisan view of his experiences as an interrogator in Afghanistan. Its a good read, check it out.