That waterboarding seems "like a 5 year old girl's birthday party" tells us that either a. there is no torture so bad as a children's party (as a parent, I can relate!), or b. that the torture dished out by the Vietnamese, Chinese, Iranians, Russians and Turks is truly horrific.
However, it is interesting that you bring up the torture used by a number of countries, because guess what? It was used extensively in China and Cambodia. Not to mention by the Pinocet regime in Chile, by the South African police under Apartheid, and even all the way back to Spanish Inquisition.
In fact, the underlying assumption you are using when you compare waterboarding to the torture used by other countries is the invalid premise that torture performed in America can never be as bad as the torture performed in other countries who have historically had poor human rights records. This is a falacious argument.
To remind you exactly what waterboarding is:
You bind an individual, then place a cloth over the subject's mouth and eyes. You strap them to an inclined bench. You then poor water over the cloth which restricts air flow. You then poor water for 20 to 40 seconds continuously on the cloth. This causes the subject to believe they are drowning (Fox News, not exactly a bastion of independent reporting, once did a demonstration and the subject gagged).
You then let the subject take two or three breaths and repeat. This process can be repeated for up to 20 to 30 minutes. That's 20 to 30 minutes of becoming close to drowning.
You say this is not significant torture? Either you are dissembling, or you are ignorant. Either way, you are wrong. It is torture pure and simple. People have actually drowned in U.S. custody while being water boarded, so you can't ever argue that it's not mortally dangerous.
None of what I'm saying is even remotely delusional. I took all of this information from well documented facts, one of which was a report from the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel.
Water boarding is a disgusting and heinous act. Those using it should be charged with the crime of torture. Anyone advocating it should be treated with contempt.
