rvg, some couple of years later?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Other people torture harsher than we do, therefore we didn't torture

You mean this like a joke (edit: you too montmorency), but you almost nailed the truth. Waterboarding can be used for torture if that is the wish of the interrogators--just do it like the japanese did. Denying someone water could be torture if it was carried out to long. Isolation or sleep deprivation can be torture if carried out to long. That's the reason the main argument from the gitmo-maniacs is false equations with japanese or nazi's or whoever. The claim that waterboarding is torture has no more merit than the claim that sleep deprivation is torture--they both have a tremendous range that covers everything from not torture to horrendous. If I felt like writing some dumb parody I would take someones claim that sleep deprivation isn't torture and then post a bunch of outraged moralizing about how so-and-so went insane from not being allowed any sleep for 11 days.

There is no argument to be made, all that's needed is a description of reality. I gave a basic description of what was done, you can read more detailed descriptions if you bother to find a good source. Anyone who has a simple desire for the truth will percieve that what we did was not torture and was most certainly a good thing to do. But too many people don't care about that, especially the talking heads on tv and the avid news watching talking-point repeaters, and that's where the arguments start. People who have filled some sort of existential gap in their soul with some ideological beliefs, religious beliefs, moral posturing, social group identification, etc, and are willing to say anything that sounds good to them. It's narcissism gone wild. People love the image of CIA agents dousing people with water with sadistic glee and scribbling down whatever they babble out to make the pain stop. McCain loves his "maverick" image too much to care that he's saying things that are idiotic. The media treats anyone who says "waterboarding is torture" like a hero, and ordinary people want a bit of that glory for themselves, or at least want to avoid being "some patriotic wingnut".

Human nature is deeply flawed and this particular flaw is very well illustrated by the Orwellian equivocation over the word "waterboarding" for deeply selfish purposes.

edit: well, I'm being to harsh on people. We heard nothing but lies and nonsense about it for a long time after all. But still, it's 2012 for goodness sake.