1) The first being of the block, that views ANY level of duress as torture.

COLONEL STUART A. HERRINGTON (Retired) CLASS OF 1960
Colonel Herrington graduated from Duquesne University, Cum Laude in 1964 with a BA in Political Science and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps. Awarded a National Defense Education Act Fellowship, he studied International Relations at the University of Florida from 1964 - 1967, earning an MA in International Relations, and completing course and language requirements for his PhD. Colonel Herrington was called to active duty in the U.S. Army in 1967.

Between 1967 and 1998, Colonel Herrington served on active duty as a counterintelligence officer in the United States Army, with duties in Vietnam, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. He became a German and Vietnamese linguist after attending language schools and serving four years in Vietnam and eight years in Germany.

In April 1975, in Saigon, Vietnam with the mission of obtaining information about missing-in-action American service members, then-Captain Herrington was the last member of the United States mission to leave Vietnam in the face of the North Vietnamese final attack. He departed from the roof of the United States Embassy only after assisting 2500 American and Vietnamese citizens to board evacuation helicopters throughout the night of April 29-30.

In 1975, Herrington was assigned to open up a new Army ROTC program at the University of South Florida. In 1979, upon his departure, this new program won the �Warriors of the Pacific� trophy as the top Army ROTC program in the United States. Then-Major Herrington was awarded the Leo A. Codd Memorial Trophy as the Outstanding Army ROTC instructor in the United States.

From 1983 to 1994, Colonel Herrington commanded four sensitive counterintelligence and human intelligence units. During this period, his units tackled some of the most serious investigations of the Cold War, including the identification, prosecution, and resultant sentencing of some of the most damaging spies of the Cold War. He established and led Task Force Russia, POW/MIA, to investigate the fate of American missing-in-action personnel in the former Soviet Union, participated in Operation Just Cause (interrogation of Panamanian detainees-1989); and Operation Desert Storm (interrogation of Iraqi senior prisoners of war-1991). He became known as the Army�s subject matter expert on counterintelligence and the application of humane interrogation procedures that yielded positive results.

For his achievements as an intelligence officer in Vietnam, Germany, Russia, Panama, and the Middle East, Colonel Herrington received numerous decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal, 5 Legions of Merit, 2 Bronze Stars, the Air Medal, and two awards of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. For counterespionage successes and for actions during Operation Desert Storm, he was twice awarded the CIA's Agency Seal Medallion.

Though retired, in 2002-2003, Colonel Herrington was dispatched by the Department of the Army to visit Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Baghdad, Iraq, to evaluate interrogation operations and counterinsurgency programs. His reports warned the Army of serious deficiencies in Guantanamo and significant problems of misconduct/mismanagement in Abu Ghraib and other facilities in Iraq. His findings and recommendations are now regarded by national defense experts as �warnings not heeded.� In Iraq, several senior officers were ultimately relieved and disciplined as a result of failings pointed out by Colonel Herrington�s report.

Other significant achievements include:

1985 Inducted into the Duquesne University Century Club for Distinguished Alumni

1989 Honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award, McAnulty College of Arts & Sciences, Duquesne University, and delivered commencement address to the College�s Class of 1989.

1995 Awarded the General Maxwell D. Taylor Chair of the Profession of Arms by the United States Army War College, for excellence in teaching as a faculty member, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA

2000 With his nomination supported by letters from Dr. Henry Kissinger and Peter Jennings, ABC, News, Colonel Herrington was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, by Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA and delivered the commencement address to the Class of 2000.

2005 Serving as Director, Global Security & Investigations, Callaway Golf Company, Colonel (retired) Herrington was named �Corporate Security Director of the year 2005� by �Access Control and Security Systems� magazine, which did a cover story on this honor in its September 2005 edition.

1980-present Published three successful non-fiction books and numerous op-ed pieces (�Wall Street Journal,� �San Diego Union-Tribune,� �Miami Herald,� �Harrisburg Patriot-News.� Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,� and various magazines and journals). Books include Silence Was A Weapon; The Vietnam War in the Villages; (Later re-released as Stalking the Vietcong; Inside Operation Phoenix); Peace with Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam: 1973-1975; and Traitors Among Us; Inside the Spy-Catcher�s World.

http://www.mtlsd.org/district/2007greatalumniawardwinners.asp

He became known as the Army's subject matter expert on counterintelligence and the application of humane interrogation procedures that yielded positive results.

In Iraq, several senior officers were ultimately relieved and disciplined as a result of failings pointed out by Colonel Herrington�s report.

There are actually TWO types of people in this debate.

1) People who know what they are talking about (like Colonel Harrington), and know what interrogation actually is through professional training.

2) Everyone else, whose training and experience with interrogation is taught from shows like "24".

Waterboarding is torture.

Coming from this background, it has been disappointing to observe the ongoing debate about torture in interrogation, usually carried out by people who have never interrogated a soul.

We rejected the view that interrogators could merely "take off the gloves" and that information would somehow magically flow if we brutalized our "guests." This notion was uninformed and counterproductive, not to mention illegal, ...

Self-styled "experts" on interrogation frequently cite the "ticking bomb scenario" (featured on shows like "24") to justify the Jack Bauer-like tormenting of a prisoner.

But the so-called ticking time bomb scenario is a Hollywood construct that I never encountered in my 30-year career. Even so, it has become the rallying cry of many well-intentioned but ethically challenged military and civilian personnel. And it has been hawked by a large constituency of senior government officials, from the White House to the Department of Justice to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, ...

Those who have not mastered these techniques fall back on the ultimate admission of incompetence and resort to brutality. Once this moral frontier is crossed, captives on the receiving end of such treatment respond to their survival instincts. Spurred by cunning and fueled by the hatred stoked by their tormentor's brutality, they respond as our American aviators responded in the Hanoi Hilton, showing their contempt by lying, invention, stalling -- anything to stop the abuse -- or by accepting death before dishonor.

When I was in the CIA I never came across a country that systematically tortures its citizens and at the same time produces useful intelligence. The objective of torture, invariably, is intimidation.

The Israelis figured all of this out a long time ago. For the last three years I have been in and out of Israeli jails interviewing members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Many of them had been in suicide bomber cells — just the kind of people the Israelis would want to extract every last detail out of. None of them, however, claimed to have been tortured. The Israelis found out what they needed to know using traditional, legal police methods. It simply isn't worth it for them to risk damaging their already shaky international reputation by torturing suspects on the slim hope they just may get a lead.

Another thing the Israelis learned is that the "ticking bomb" scenario so popular on shows like 24 (and even in recent presidential debates) is a false choice. Any terrorist group capable of carrying off a sophisticated attack knows enough to "compartmentalize" its attack — the operatives are told only what they need to know. Or the attacks are so closely timed that it is impossible to stop them. For instance, had we arrested one of the 9/11 teams, there would not have been enough time to physically coerce its members into telling us about the other three hijacking teams.

As long as the Administration takes its lead from Jack Bauer, we're going to continue to spend a lot of international capital for very little return.

We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately.

What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22.

Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well.

Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives.

It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?

Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.

it’s called man’s inhumanity to man, that’s why the Geneva Conventions are so important in this argument, if mankind MUST accept war, then at least there must be some guidelines, some rules to this horrific “game”, if, and when you stop following the rules, and there are no restrictions then the world will be on the brink of annihilation, think about it, why is the US concerned about Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons? because there’s a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iran has signed that treaty, the treaty defines the “rules” that Iran must follow, if you want Iran to adhere to the rules, then the US must also follow international rules, bending the rules would be a nightmare scenario which may, in the short-term make things appear better, but in the long-term, it would prove to be a very, very bad decision

when a Vietnamese soldier used waterboarding against American soldiers he was court-martialed by the US military …how can we now condone something that we found repulsive and reprehensible not that long ago?

The Geneva Convention is the biggest joke in the world outside of the US and liberal media.

Iran has NOT been following the rules and keeps telling the US to "shove it" when we try and restrict them. I bet you're going to be against the Iraq War too right

People who support this useless drivel are what's causing the deterioration of this once-great country.

So yes, let's follow a code that the barbarians we fight have no heed of so that we can be the "bigger man" in the fight.

This way, when we all speak Arabic in our stone huts with nuclear fall out raining down, we can be proud and say "At least we didn't break the rules!!

what it comes down to it is people like you cant see a terrorist go through any duress.

And as for moutanins of evidence- when the other side gets an oppurtunity to speak without retribution, then we'll see the other side. And dont even bother going into "how do you know they are there?" antics, because we all know from everyday experiences that we are not free to speak our minds anywhere and at anytime without consequence.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Well if you believe the group I cite to be fictional how about you go into the wokplace tomorrow and tell everyone and everyone our thoughts about them, even when someone has pissed you off and see how long you last. Sure you have a right to speak your mind- but dont expect to stay long

my son is over there serving his country proudly, so your ass can sleep soundly at night

why don't you take your anti american rhetoric and leave the country,