As a Navy SEAL attending SERE school I was waterboarded, bounced off walls, smacked around, put in really small boxes with no light or heat in the dead of winter. Boxes that wouldn't allow me to sit or lie down. Other boxes that I had to kneel in with my head between my knees. We were sleep deprived and poorly fed. This was not torture, Just tough training. SERE was a joke compare to BUD/S (SEAL training). I don't think the USA tortured anyone at GITMO. Torture is what the North Vietnamese did to our POWs at the Hanoi Hilton etc. Torture is what the Islamic wackjobs do to captured Americans and others who don't agree with them or follow Sharia law. What ever happened at GITMO was nothing compared to the Twin Towers, The Pentagon or the field in Pennsylvania on 9/11/01.

You are a misinformed Navy SEAL. The experience suffered by torture victims at Gitmo and elsewhere was qualitatively different from your training. Were you kept shackled and awake for 11 days straight? Did you have the real fear that the abuses to which YOU SUBMITTED YOURSELF would last for years without end? Did your trainers instill the real fear that your family would be harmed?

The gitmos and others did not suffer, I repeat did not suffer the pain and torture that happened to those in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and flight 93 that crashed into the field in Pennsylvania and those who had their heads hacked off.

Don't tell a Seal he didn't pay for his training with pain and suffering you pompous pigs ass.

I don't know whether or not the people in the Twin Towers suffered more than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did, when my fellow countrymen forced him to experience simulated organ failure through drowning at least 6 times a day for a month.

Its irrelevant. America is supposed to be better than our enemies. We're supposed to strong enough not to stoop to their level.

Do we not have the most fearsome military yet seen? If so, why should we allow ourselves to stoop to the level of a small band of backwards radicals?

As to SEAL76, who keeps repeating the same argument in every thread on this topic: I appreciate your service, but I don't know how you can't understand the difference between what you voluntarily chose to do and what others are forced to do. Would you rather be held down, helpless, while someone scrapes a razor across your throat? Or would you rather shave your neck? Being helpless makes all the difference in the world - and respectfully, unless you were kidnapped into SERE training, and never given any expectation of release or a safeword, then you cannot possibly understand torture.

You are assuming that everyone who was tortured actually had a part in 9/11, not that that actually should make a difference. There are certainly people, including some of those killed on 9/11, who suffered more than Seals during training, but that in no way absolves us from treating other human beings with basic humanity. Seals are not some gold standard of how much people should suffer before it's called torture. Seals are volunteers. They are given the option to quit. You aren't given that option when you are really being tortured, which fundamentally changes the experience.

"Don't tell a Seal he didn't pay for his training with pain and suffering you pompous pigs ass." "As to SEAL76, who keeps repeating the same argument in every thread on this topic: I appreciate your service, but I don't know how you can't understand the difference between what you voluntarily chose to do and what others are forced to do." Frankly, I don't appreciate SEAL76's service. I've yet to see a substantive argument to back the hollow mantra that our soldiers' exertions and sacrifices have anything to do with securing our freedoms, at least not in the last 60 years and certainly in my life time. Am I supposed to respect a man just because he endures punishment? It seems like the backyard wrestlers I see on late night T.V. take equal or greater punishment and I have no problem viewing them as jackasses. People like SEAL76, however, are clearly merciless individuals with no conception of a morality higher than "survive at every cost." I have no doubt that he endured a great deal of pain and suffering to become a trained killer in addition to a heartless demon, but what in the world does that have to do with me? The fact that my (and, fortunately, most peoples') calling does not require me to submit to the verbal abuse of drill sergeants and endure hypothermia doesn't obligate me to adopt a respectful attitude towards those who engage in such foolish, ultimately destructive activities.

You don't know what the people in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, Flight 93, and those who had their heads hacked off suffered?

This comment could only be written by someone who is willfully ingnorant to that day and the following days, and willfully choose to ignore anything about those souls who lost their lives that day.

You don't know what they suffered?

Add ignorant to pompous pig's ass.

At least give those souls the dignity of their story before defending that evil Sheikh who rejoiced in the planing of their suffering and death, and planned more suffering and death.

Your insulated protected life is obvious, and the fact that you have zero idea of how you live an insulated protected life is telling.

Every time I pose the question of the exact connection between the military service of fine, upstanding, morally centered individuals like SEAL76 I get the same meaningless response about how our military protects my right to say foolish things. Perhaps someone one this thread can explain how. What did SEAL76 do in Vietnam that played any role in my ability to speak freely? What have any of the soldiers fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan done to preserve my rights? Any serious answers?

it's a cliche. it is also the standard hard-liner right wing response to any kind of dissent. Those cats think they like free speech, but when it comes right down to it, they'd be happier with an authoritarian despot (so long as he agreed with them).

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

Congratulations, firdalyn, you've just pointed out why the military isn't allowed to torture. But you didn't really answer my question: I asked what the US military has done in the last 60 years to protect my freedom as a citizen living in mainland America. All you have done is repeat the claim (albeit in a more official form) that this is what the military does... any evidence?

According to you nothing. According to myself and the military if they follow their oath, everything.

Prove it? Your alive and still posting which only means this country has not yet become a dictatorship where dissenters are jailed or killed and you could at the least admit that there would be a long line of people who would love to be your dictator. So....if you are still alive and still posting, than I do believe you have at least one soldier if not more to thank. You could start with SEAL76.

Here is an example:

Sir, thank you for your service to this nation. I must though, disagree with your comment and here is why;

And please don't intimate that he did not suffer pain while training to be a soldier in the United States Military. And please don't intimate that just because he volunteered his sacrifice was any less.

You don't get it, do you? I am not thankful for SEAL's service. The fact that he suffered pain in reaching his own personal career goals is entirely inconsequential-- there are plenty of stupid and/or immoral jobs that require one to undergo pain (e.g. backyard wrestler and seal clubber respectively) and I don't feel the need to lavish praise on those folks. And what is it with this "service" BS? It's a job, and usually a crappy one at that.

I don't just disagree with this jerk's comment, I disagree deeply with his decision to "shoot men at orders, asking nothing of the justice of [his] cause," and in my name to boot.