WATERBOARDING: An emailer thinks I am under-estimating the horrors of the technique backed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Wall Street Journal:
If anything, the now standard description of water-boarding understates the cruelty of the method. Those who were subjected to this method by South American security forces report that "they had been held under water until they had in fact begun to drown and lost consciousness, only to be revived by their torturers and submerged again. It is one of their worst memories" (Jennifer Harbury, 'Truth, Torture, and the American Way," pp. 15-16). As you note, the French used it in Algeria (there is a vivid depiction in the movie "The Battle of Algiers"). The United States used it heavily in the Philippines a hundred years ago; they called it "the water cure." The person who probably knows the most about this is Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College and author of a new history of torture, soon to be published by Princeton University Press.
Marty Lederman discusses the depraved, Orwellian editorial at the Wall Street Journal here. We do, in fact, have a documented case of the tactic. I discussed it earlier this year in reviewing the Schmidt Report. That Pentagon report confirmed that at Gitmo, one detainee was subjected to the following:
He was kept awake for 18 - 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 consecutive days, he was forced to wear bras and thongs on his head, he was prevented from praying, he was forced to crawl around on a dog leash to perform dog tricks, he was told his mother and sister were whores, he was subjected to extensive "cavity searches" (after 160 days in solitary confinement) and then "on seventeen ocasions, between 13 Dec 02 and 14 Jan 03, interrogators, during interrogations, poured water over the subject."
The latter is a polite word for "water-boarding." Later in the report, we are informed that this technique was deployed "regularly" as a "control measure." All this was "legally permissible under the existing guidance." Medical doctors were on hand to ensure that the victim didn't die. Water-boarding, in other words, is a specific technique directly authorized by Rumsfeld, described in the Schmidt Report, under the John Yoo rules, as legally permissible even for POWs under the Geneva Conventions. The Schmidt Report described this treatment as "humane." It is very important to focus on the specifics of what this president has authorized. When he says "We do not torture," he means that this technique is not "torture". A technique used by South American dictators is fine by Bush. This from a president who had the chutzpah to respond to Abu Ghraib by saying that the abuses did not reflect America's values. He was right. They reflect his administration's.
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