(POLITICAL!) Sometimes I am ashamed of our nation.

[StewartG]

To think about a shared commonality with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Disgraceful.



PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN), Christiane Amanpour -- A recently disclosed memo gave U.S. interrogators the ability to use harsh methods -- what many call "torture" -- to extract information from terrorist suspects after 9/11. Around the world, critics saw it as another blow to American prestige and moral authority.

The 2003 document also invokes wartime powers to protect interrogators who violate the Geneva Conventions, for example, by the use of waterboarding -- when a prisoner is made to think he is drowning.

Half a world away, the divisive debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture comes into sharp relief at the infamous S-21, Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This is where the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and brutalized its enemies from 1975 to 1979. I visited the once secret S-21, now a museum, with Van Nath, a former inmate. He remembers being brought here blindfolded and terrified:

"I thought that was the end of my life," he told me. "In my room people kept dying, one or two every day."

Van Nath was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down.

"We could not sit. If we wanted to sit, we had to ask permission first. No talking, whispering or making noise," he told me.

Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered. Watch the former prisoner recount the brutality »

Van Nath was accused of being a CIA agent and given electric shock torture, but he survived when his jailers found out he was one of Cambodia's most prominent painters. And what did they make him paint?

"Pol Pot's picture. Big pictures," he told me. "I had to paint the same one again and again. If they didn't like my painting, that would have been the end of my life."

So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It's one of the few public reminders of the regime's crimes.

Take water torture, for instance. Van Nath remembers it as if it were yesterday. I gasped as I entered a room filled with his vivid depictions.

One of his paintings shows a prisoner blindfolded and hoisted onto a makeshift scaffold by two guards. He is then lowered head first into a massive barrel of water. Another shows a prisoner with cloth over his face, writhing as an interrogator pours water over his head.

Van Nath still remembers the accompanying screams: "It sounded like when we are really in pain, choking in water," he told me. "The sound was screaming, from the throat. I suppose they could not bear the torture.

"Whenever we heard the noises we were really shocked and scared. We thought one day they will do the same thing to us."

As he talked and showed me around, my mind raced to the debate in the United States over this same tactic used on its prisoners nearly 40 years later. I stared blankly at another of Van Nath's paintings. This time a prisoner is submerged in a life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe. His interrogators, arrayed around him, are demanding information.

I asked Van Nath whether he had heard this was once used on America's terrorist suspects. He nodded his head. "It's not right," he said.

But I pressed him: Is it torture? "Yes," he said quietly, "it is severe torture. We could try it and see how we would react if we are choking under water for just two minutes. It is very serious."

Back then, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge cadres recognized this for what it was and used it with brutal efficiency. The Cambodian genocide ultimately killed 2 million people.

Fourteen thousand of them had passed through the gates of hell at Tuol Sleng Prison.

[Just Lucky]

I read recently that some folks think it is no longer safe for Yoo, Rumsfeld and some others to travel outside the US for fear they will be indicted and tried for breaking international law.

Nothing would please me more than to see them tried. I prefer it be in the US. I think it highly unlikely they will be tried here as Bush will almost certainly pardon them as he did Scooter. There is speculation Bush's last act as President will be to pardon himself.

Damn these criminals for bringing shame upon our nation.

[roni]

I ain't ashamed of nothing I don't have control over.

I pledge allegiance to the UN helicopters that fly over my house daily.

Ya'll know the color of the helicopters.

I am at risk though as I have run out of alunium foil.

Contribute to my alunium foil fund. Gold coins preferred.

[beerbreath]

Let's be real careful here.We should not treat these animals like they are normal people.These people are in a large part mass murders and want you and I dead.If we can prevent mass killings by getting info from these scum bags,I say it makes perfect sense.If we start getting to soft,we will regret it.

[sctx]

oh, this should be good....... welcome to the off topic forum beerbreath

[StewartG]

Originally Posted by beerbreath

Let's be real careful here.We should not treat these animals like they are normal people.These people are in a large part mass murders and want you and I dead.If we can prevent mass killings by getting info from these scum bags,I say it makes perfect sense.If we start getting to soft,we will regret it.

Is this an EXACT quote from Pol Pot rationalizing the use of water torture, or are you just paraphrasing?




Since when is not using torture the same thing as "being soft?" Are there not legal and humane ways to be tough? And doesn't sticking up for traditional American principals like, say, not torturing people, show an amazing amount of strength and resolution in light of the events of 9/11? Kind of like saying, "no matter what you do, you will NOT make us stoop to your level."

[beerbreath]

Well,it seems some out there want to get all warm and fuzzy with these scumbags.That is just crazy!

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by beerbreath

Let's be real careful here.We should not treat these animals like they are normal people.These people are in a large part mass murders and want you and I dead.If we can prevent mass killings by getting info from these scum bags,I say it makes perfect sense.If we start getting to soft,we will regret it.

I think it is a sad testament to the quality of Bush's propaganda over the last few years that someone would make a statement like yours. Many of the people we have detained had nothing whatsoever to do with al-Qaeda. Even if they were associated with al-Qaeda do you lack a frame of moral reference? Didn't you preacher, your rabbi, your priest or your momma ever tell you that some things are just plain wrong?

[StewartG]

Originally Posted by beerbreath

Well,it seems some out there want to get all warm and fuzzy with these scumbags.That is just crazy!

Who?

Since when does not torturing someone equate to getting warm and fuzzy with them? I don't understand.

So not pulling out their nails is the same thing as spooning and sticking your tongue in their ear?

[beerbreath]

Question.If you had a guy you knew had info on a nuclear attack on New York city,what would you be willing to do to this guy to stop the attack?

[roni]

Have ya'll contributed to my alunium foil fund yet?

[beerbreath]

Anyone who STILL thinks these people don't want all of us dead is a fool.What will it take to wake you up,9/11 was not enough?Obama has said he will go after these people and kill them,and he is right in saying that.

[sctx]

Originally Posted by roni

Have ya'll contributed to my alunium foil fund yet?

I feel this is a cleverly veiled Hillary donation scam

[roni]

Originally Posted by sctx

I feel this is a cleverly veiled Hillary donation scam

I ain't give her one red cent and I ain't a'gonna either.

Foil, nothing but foil.

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by beerbreath

Question.If you had a guy you knew had info on a nuclear attack on New York city,what would you be willing to do to this guy to stop the attack?

Mighty unlikely scenario. Let's assume it does happen and we torture. Suppose they don't break but would have without torture using standard interrogation techniques?

How about if we torture the fellow who may know about the nuke and then another fellow comes along who may know about a regular explosive shouldn't we torture him? What if he just may know where an AK47 is. Should we torture him? What if might just know someone who knows about an AK47? Should we torture him?.............................................. .....................................