[Jill]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Because you said please.

No, I would not legalize torture in any form to be used in law enforcement. However, it is routinely done. (see my thread: Is tasering torture?)

So the fact that something you consider torture, which has not been legally classified as torture, happens in law enforcement from time to time, means what, exactly?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Enforcing rule of law is an entirely different matter from protecting a country during wartime. Do you want your cops killing gang members on the street? Of course not. Do you want your soldiers in 1944 shooting at Japanese soldiers, whose country's goal is to destroy the US? Yes you do.

False equivalence. If gang members took to the streets and started shooting at law enforcement, I would absolutely support the police shooting to kill. That's what happens during wartime; our troops are being fired upon, or are at imminent risk of being fired upon, and they are returning fire with fire, which is always an appropriate response.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

To not do whatever you can to foil plots to kill thousands and hurt the country is inhumane.

To not do whatever you can that works, and doesn't compromise the value of the information obtained is, indeed, inhumane. No one is suggesting that potential or accused terrorists be left entirely alone to further their plots unencumbered. The implication is absurd. The motto "by any means necessary" is contrary to the nature of the free world, and what separates us from those who you refer to as being for "unfreedom". We do not beat them by becoming them.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Ah, but the law is never so black and white...

It certainly is in this case. It has been prosecuted by both law enforcement and the military, resulting in convictions and court-martials.

. . .

A Punishable Offense

In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

. . .

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Constitutional protections are not available for non-citizens who are not living in the US.

You misunderstand. It is a violation of our Constitution to violate the terms of our Treaties, that makes it defacto in violation of our Constitution. See Article VI, which reads, in part:

Originally Posted by U.S. Constitution

All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

. . .

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I think this is true, but probably not important. I would expect that the authors did not consider the possibility of suddenly having to fight a shadowy network of combatants, scattered around every corner of the globe, some places which are signatories and some not.

Of course it's important. You don't get to just poo-poo away our responsibilities under treaties we're signatories to, just because they may not have anticipated a certain kind of enemy. That excuse is nothing new, by the way. From the previously linked NPR article:

Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, says that throughout the centuries, the justifications for using waterboarding have been remarkably consistent.

"Almost every time this comes along, people say, 'This is a new enemy, a new kind of war, and it requires new techniques,'" he says. "And there are always assurances that it is carefully regulated."

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I doubt it, and I'm sure all gathered intelligence is validated using sophisticated methods we can't even imagine.

Your doubts notwithstanding, even the CIA admits to its unreliability.

CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks on America

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

. . .

The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.

Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.

. . .