US President George Bush has reiterated his position that the US administration does not condone torture, following comments by Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In an interview, Mr Cheney agreed that "a dunk in the water" for terrorism suspects during questioning in order to save American lives was a "no-brainer".

His comments have provoked outrage from anti-torture and human rights groups.

When asked about the remark, President Bush said that the United States does not use torture and was not going to.

Mr Cheney is assumed by human rights groups to have been referring to "water boarding" - a technique in which suspects are made to think that they are drowning.

That's cleared that one up, then.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6093298.stm

It's not torture if your motives are good.

Er..

Not giving detainees their day in court is a bigger deal than this torture stuff.

Honestly, this thread makes me wonder if the brains are actually activited when posting, smart people not seeming to understand pretty basic stuff.

Every case of torture ever in the history of torture has been justified by the same thing.

You can't say "Well we'll allow torture, but only on bad guys if we think it will save lives". Because..

A) We don't know they are bad guys. How many people have been executed, imprisoned or tortured and found out later to be innocent? Quite a lot, and that's the ones that actually got a trial.

B) We don't know if it will save lives. We only know that we will torture someone who may or may not be "bad" and may or may not have information that may or may not help save lives.

C) Every fvcking case of torture ever was justified by that ffs!!

Jesus effing christ, learn from history. Jesus! I can't belive this stupid shIt.

Either poker players are inherently liberal or the conservatives around here are too apethetic to give opinions.

First of all the world isn't divided into liberal and conservative, it's a bit more complex than that. Second I would expect most "conservatives" to be against torture as well as the liberals, social democrats, libertarians, socialists etc. Unless I am mistaken conservatives believe in habeas corpus, individual freedom, the right to a fair trial etc etc. The word you're looking for when you say conservative is populist, nazi, fascist or ignorant.