Michael Mukasey, the nominee for the position of Attorney General, claims not to know if waterboarding is torture or not. Rudy Giuliani claims it depends on who does it. Well, I would urge everybody to read this frightening post by Malcolm Nance, a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California (hat tip: Grant Gallicho). Remember that the SERE program was designe to teach American agents and soldiers how to deal with torture if they were captured. In Nance’s words, the program “was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim”. SERE focused on the most odious techniques known to have been used by (among others) the Soviet Union, World War II-era Japan, the Khmer Rouge, the Viet Cong, and the Gestapo. Torture techniques that did not mark the body were deemed especially valuable, as then the prisoner could be paraded publicly to confess to all sorts of crimes, without clear evidence of coercion. SERE taught how to cope with these techniques. When seeking acceptable means to torture prisoners, the Bush administration simply picked up the SERE handbook and adopted its defensive techniques offensively. One such technique was waterboarding.
Nance knows waterboarding “personally and intimately”, as SERE staff were required to undergo waterboarding. His conclusion? “Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period”. He explains why:
“Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.
Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
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.
Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.”
Read the whole piece, if you can stomach it. This is not 24, or some sanitized macho thriller. This is a real life horror story, sanctioned by a regime that claims to be pro-life. And no, there is no earnest “muddling through” in trying to figure out what constitutes torture and what does not. There is only a willingness to embrace evil in a cold, calculating fashion.
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