Centerblue.org

In the ongoing battle between the White House and Congress over detainees in secret prisons and the methods for “interrogating” them, I don’t understand why we’re losing sight of the fact that what we are talking about is torture.

As Eugene Robinson points out in the above-linked column, torture is torture period. Bush talks about “alternative” questioning techniques that are part of his little “program” including indefinite detentions that raise mental images of dictators sending dissidents to Siberia. The “alternative” techniques to date have included “waterboarding” (which the administration promises it will stop doing–yeah right), sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, use of ear-splitting noise, and other methods that cause physical and psychological agony.

Bush much prefers to keep the discussion abstract, a struggle over “finding clarity” in the Geneva Conventions by re-defining them as he sees fit. But we can’t get away from what we’re really talking about. It’s torture.

Wanting to bring the discussion back to concrete terms, I looked up the definition of “waterboarding” in Wikipedia because I wasn’t really sure what it meant. Here’s what I found:

The modern practice of waterboarding, characterized in 2005 by former CIA director Porter J. Goss as a “professional interrogation technique”[1], involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation. However, it is relatively difficult to aspirate a large amount of water since the lungs are higher than the mouth, and the victim is unlikely to actually die if this is done by skilled practitioners. Waterboarding may be used by captors who wish to impose anguish without leaving marks on their victims as evidence. [citation needed] Journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito described the CIA’s waterboarding technique as follows:

The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last over two minutes before begging to confess. “The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.[2]

…

Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated “a number of people” who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states:

[Dr. Keller] argued that it was indeed torture. Some victims were still traumatized years later, he said. One patient couldn’t take showers, and panicked when it rained. “The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience,” he said.[4][5]

Matt Lauer recently interviewed Bush about the CIA’s secret prisons and he asked about waterboarding. Here was the exchange on the issue:

Matt Lauer: I don’t want to let this “within the law issue” slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?

President Bush: I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing. All I’m telling you is that you’ve asked me whether or not we’re doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so.

What an arrogant, pompous SOB. A president is subverting the values that America holds most dear and he can’t deign to talk about the vile torture he is authorizing? What’s next..thumbscrews? Iron maidens?

As a few brave senators and representatives battle the GOP establishment’s attempt to rubberstamp Bush’s destruction of any semblance of America as we once knew it, let us not forget what we’re talking about before it gets lost in all the fancy language and political spin. We’re talking about torture. This is not something about which we can have a gentleman’s debate and still pretend to be the champions of liberty and democracy around the world. It’s torture, a technique that is not even particularly useful given the victim’s need to tell his tormentors whatever they want to hear, made up or otherwise, just so that they will leave him alone.

Get it straight, ok? Torture.