You caught us. We've tortured through waterboarding a bunch of people. Umm...three to be exact. For a total of less than five minutes. Against mass murderers for information in pretty extreme circumstances to prevent further terrorist attacks. We apologize for not taking the moral high road against people that instead use very brutal physical torture (please don't mistake our forms of physical torture--namely making people stand naked for a long time and not letting them go to sleep--with their eyeball-gouging and beheadings) on a routine basis.
Wait, I didn't include waterboarding with that list of our brutal physical torture tactics, you say? Oh, but that's because waterboarding does nothing really that's physical. Wait, it's not physical torture, you ask? No, it just makes you think you're drowning. I know, it's a terrible thing, that's why we deliberately do it on such innocent, harmless people as the mastermind of 9/11 for about 1 1/2 to 3 minutes. As well as on two other people for a grand total of less than five minutes.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to torture any more people with waterboarding because of those stupid laws that make it more difficult for us to torture and use harsh interrogation techniques than at any point in our nation's history. Or because we're not the cruel, sadistic people we're made out to be and we in fact only intend to use it as an extreme measure in extreme circumstances. On three people. For a total time of less than five minutes.
Yep, you've caught us red-handed.
So first it was no one. Then it was five people. Yeah. And that's why all those tapes got erased, since we were going to tell you about those five people anyway.
And, yes, water boarding is torture. Just because it isn't physical, which it kind of is, doesn't mean it isn't torture.
And, one last thing. Basically everybody with any expertise in the field says that torture isn't effective because people will say what you want them to say so they'll stop being tortured.
And, do you really think that these people are going to carry out a plan if someone who knows about it has been captured? Why risk it when you could just nudge the date or the place a little?
"What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!"
H. P. Lovecraft
Okay first of all, there's no way you can no for certain that they're only torturing three people. Of course they're not going to report all of what goes on behind the scenes. You said it is good to use water boarding if the situations are extreme enough. The situation is always going to be extreme and a matter of national security, and the people that undergo this torture, because yes it is torture, aren't even guaranteed to have valuable information. Any kind of torturing will usually induce people to spit out anything just to end the torture, so any information they give is likely to be unreliable (Spanish Inquisition ring a bell?)
Well, thats just what I think.
Then why did we call it torture when we tried members of the Japanese Army for doing it after World War II?
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"We cannot redeem evil, we must combat it." -- Jean Paul Sartre
I strongly recommend you read the essay I just posted, which basically proves you wrong: http://www.progressiveu.org/013249-us-versus-them-how-innocents-are-sent...