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Why have an anti torture rally?
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As previously mentioned there will be an anti torture rally today at Washington Square.
There has been a lot of debate over whether or not waterboarding is torture, or an "enhanced interrogation technique."
Conservative radio talk show host from Chicago Mancow Muller was formerly an advocate of waterboarding until he bravely volunteered to give it a try himself
Jesse Ventura who was waterboarded himself has this to say:
Jesse Ventura: I'm bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we've created our own Hanoi Hilton. And we can live with that? I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level – it's a good thing I'm not President because I would prosecute every person that was involved with that torture, I would prosecute the people that did it, I would prosecute the people that ordered it because torture is against the law.
Larry King: You were a Navy Seal.
Jesse Ventura: That's right and I was waterboarded so I know -- at SERE school: Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combated zone which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all in essence every one of us was waterboarded. It is torture.
Larry King: What's it like?
Jesse Ventura: It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It's no good because -- I'll put it to you this way – You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate Murders.
Is beating someone until they have brain damage considered torture? That appears to be what happened to Air Force Gulf War veteran Sean Baker. Baker dressed up like an inmate at Guantanamo for a training exercise on how to handle unruly prisoners. Baker was subsequently beaten so severely he now has seizures.
Jason Chaffetz went on a tour at Guantanamo, and came away with the conclusion none of the torture that took place ever actually happened at Guantanamo. He also wrote a letter to Barack Obama on the issue, stating that's one of the reasons why the facility should not be closed.
Ron Paul on the other hand has stated:
Kathleen Wells: So, you do believe that we were committing torture in our interrogations in Guantanamo?
Congressman Ron Paul: I don't think the pictures I've seen were fictitious - the ones that were released a year or two ago. And, obviously, there are some more pictures of torture that they draw more attention to because they refuse to release them, which means that it must be a true indictment of what they were doing.
It's true much of the torture that has taken place did not actually happen to prisoners at Guantanamo, but actually before they were incarcerated there.
The UK Telegraph reported Binyam Mohamed was tortured before being sent to Guantanamo, and the torture goes far beyond waterboarding:
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
The UK Telegraph has also reported some of the most heinous crimes such as rape took place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq:
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
The rape photos are apparently starting to leak out to the Internet, but a link will not be provided here since the images are truly disturbing.
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