Waterboarding should be legal in the United States.

1. Waterboarding is used to collect life-saving informationWaterboarding should be used only when lives are at stake. It's not for punishment or for extracting confessions.Suppose terrorists have hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in New York City. One of the terrorists is detained and there is good reason to believe he knows where the bomb is located. The objective is to obtain the information from him in time to stop the detonation. I claim that it would be immoral not to use waterboarding under those circumstances, because the potential is for saving many innocent lives, and the worst case for the detainee is that he is terrorized temporarily, but not permanently harmed.The phrase "ticking time bomb" is somewhat misleading. The detainee must have information that is likely to save lives if revealed, but the information may retain it's critical nature for months or years. Is it morally justified to kill one innocent person to save the lives of many others? That's debatable. Our question is whether it is justified to subject a terrorist to temporary discomfort to save the lives of many citizens. It's not only justified, it is morally required. The case of a nuclear weapon is extreme, but it is a valid hypothetical to demonstrate the principle. We know of only three cases at Gitmo when the CIA used waterboarding. In one case, a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was uncovered and prevented. It's used so infrequently because other enhanced interrogation techniques usually are effective. 2. Safeguards prevent indiscriminate useThe conditions for using waterboarding ought to be as follows: a. It is to be only used by trained CIA interrogators, never by the military or the police. b. The detainee must be certified by an attending physician as unlikely to suffer permanent harm. c. The objective is to get information that will save lives. d. Either the President or a Judge appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate must issue a warrant based upon a showing probable cause that the detainee knows the information sought, and it is probable that lives are at stake.e. It's not prohibited by mutually subscribed to and mutually honored treaty with the enemy.Famed liberal lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz supports the morality of using waterboarding under presidential warrant. He says, "If the president of the United States thinks it's absolutely essential to defend the lives of thousands of people, he ought to be on the line. He ought to have to sign a torture warrant ..." [2. http://www.npr.org...] 3. Waterboarding is effectiveWaterboarding unquestionably produces time-critical information needed to save lives, and that information could not be obtained by other means. Waterboarding of Kalid Sheik Muhammad "— led to the discovery- of a KSM plot, the "Second Wave," "to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airline into" a building in Los Angeles," In the three cases that waterboarding was used on terrorists, Al Qaida members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, it always worked and the information obtained was verified. [3. http://directorblue.blogspot.com......] Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT), and ultimately waterboarding (in the three cases): "produced 3,000 of the 6,000 critical counter-terror intelligence reports only after normal techniques had proved fruitless; used on Zubaydah revealed KSM's identity as a mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks; KSM ratted out a number of mass-murderers including Hambali; Hambali's brother ratted out a cell bent on "9/11 Wave 2" on the West Coast; Zubaydah also revealed Padilla and his plan to detonate a simplistic dirty bomb in Washington, DC" [3] Former CIA operative John Kiriakou also told CNN: "The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions. ... All that changed [... after waterboarding], Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique. ... The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said. ... The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said." [4. http://tinyurl.com... ] Author Marc Theisen independently verified Kiriakou's claims, saying "And in Courting Disaster, I meticulously document the evidence for the efficacy of the CIA interrogation program — based not on Kirakou's claims, but on the testimony of the actual interrogators, interviews with top CIA and other intelligence officials, the evidence presented in the CIA inspector general's report, and other top-secret documents declassified by the Obama administration." [5. http://tinyurl.com...] Former CIA official Jose Rodriquez, who was in charge of the program, recently wrote in his book Hard Measures that milder FBI techniques cold not have replaced waterboarding. [6. http://tinyurl.com... ] Rodriquez writes, “Could we have gotten the same information using FBI practices?” Rodriguez asks. “Maybe. If we had all the time in the world, perhaps we could have. But we did not.”In 60 Minutes interview [7. http://www.syracuse.com...], Rodriquez said "We made some al Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days," Rodriguez said on Sunday's "60 Minutes." "I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives." "In particular, Rodriguez defended the treatment of suspected al Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who did not cooperate during initial questioning. After a combination of waterboarding, which simulates drowning, and sleep deprivation, Mohammed gave up information that helped disrupt 10 large-scale terrorist plots, Rodriguez said." [7] 4. The alternative to waterboarding is rendition. No moral leader is going to let a terrorist enjoy a comfortable retirement while the terrorist holds information that could save lives. The policy of the Clinton Administration was to turn over detainees to other countries [8. http://www.fas.org...] who would use torture to extract information. The Bush Administration changed that policy to use EIT, including waterboarding in the extreme, in order to improve the reliability of the information being obtained by poorly trained foreign interrogators, and also to prevent the severe torture used. The Obama Administration has continued a policy of rendition. [9.http://tinyurl.com... ]Waterboarding is certainly harsh, but it produces no lasting physical harm or serious mental harm and is therefore superior to rendition. It is used in the training of CIA operatives and special forces personnel. A fair number of journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded, so they can write about the experience. Those in include Kaj Larsen and Christopher Hitchins They report a horrible experience, but they would not have volunteered if they thought it would seriously injure them, and it did not. How many other forms of "torture" has a list of journalists volunteering for it? I know of none.Whether or not waterboarding meets the definition of torture is moot. It is currently legal in the United States. It's use has been suspended by President Obama's executive order. [9] If it is torture is is certainly in a different category from the type of torture that causes permanent harm. No interrogation technique is guaranteed to save lives, but waterboarding provides a good chance when all else fails. It should remain legal.The resolution is affirmed.