Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a “a dunk in the water.” But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.
The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
This doesn’t surprise me. All states will torture if they deem it necessary and will have documented procedures to assist, which is in itself a moral failing. What particularly disgusts me is the Jack Bauer wannabees like Cheney who are not only proud of the use of torture, but find it morally defensible.
How can words even begin to adequately express the disgust I feel about this? 🙁
In one of the Mission Impossible films, the bad guy says something like “You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats the most vulnerable.”
So who are the most vulnerable in the USA? Illegal detainees, foreigners, some ethnic groups, the uninsured and jailed criminals.
The Pigs won….just kill me now.
I just know some wing nut is going to defend the practice.
It doesn’t kill or cause permanent bodily harm.
If it takes a protracted and wasteful process and turns it into a far more efficient one and the use of it is strictly limited to very proscribed situations.
How is this kind of personal discomfort different than forcing an enemy combatant to stand in an awkward position for hours on end.
If you are truly against this borderline torture business, you should want the troops home. Which isn’t what we are getting even under Obama …
Well said Thinker. However, you know that according to the media, if you voice dissent you’re a nut.
And the unintended consequence of stopping waterboarding?
Fewer prisoners
More dead combatants
A bullet is a lot more efficient and cheaper than a gang of cry-me-a-river liberal Obama lawyers.
It’s rare that useful intelligence can be gathered in this way. Worst of all it seems to have become a common enough practice to have detailed guidelines.
I don’t want to win a war that requires me to sacrifice my respect for basic human dignity.
Look for me among the refugees.
#5 Hmeyers
Ha! Finely honed sarcasm.
You ARE taking the piss, right?
Well, if water boarding ever loses its efficacy, there is always the comfy chair.
But really, is the common terrorist going to know anything outside of the names of the people in his cell? Maybe the cell’s contact will be known, but if the terrorists have any brains, the cells aren’t told their contact’s name.
The terrorist operate a distributed job shop, where I would guess everyone knows as little as possible, and the capture of any individual yields almost no useful information. And, we keep asassinating the top individuals, at $68,000 a pop, with Hellfire missles; so there is nothing to be learned from these supposed masterminds.
If we would just start killing everyone on the planet, eventually we’ll eliminate all the terrorists. Problem solved, next.
If this is not torture like many people in and out of power say, then if a US soldier was subjected to the same treatment by, say, Iran or North Korea, these people would not open their mouths to utter one single protestation of the waterboarding.
I have no doubt that the Dick Cheneys of this country would be raising a huge ruckus if this was applied to US soldiers (or unlucky citizens who have the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). They would be calling for everything from UN sanctions to retaliatory airstrikes to avenge the horror being done to fellow countrymen.
I would not wish this treatment on even Dick Cheney.
At least he will go down in history for what he is.
I keep hearing the argument that torture(waterboarding) never works. If not, why did the CIA do it? It’s unlikely that post-9/11 is the only time the CIA has wandered down this path. It was probably practiced in dark little holes all around the world. All George Bush and company did was shine a light on the practice. Dick Cheney didn’t just look up waterboarding in the encyclopedia, call up George Tenet and tell him to go torture some Muslims. Bush told Tenet to get tough and Tenet looked into their repertoire.
How many terrorists were water boarded again? Oh yeah, only 3 according to reports..
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html
Nice try. The lefty goons on DU fail again.
#14 Warden
Fail? How so?
Tell me again who the good guys and bad guys are here. I’ve lost track.
The Warden said,
How many terrorists were water boarded again? Oh yeah, only 3 according to reports..
How many is too many? One is too many in my opinion.
Wonder what meticulous detail the “internal documents” described about a bullet passing through various body parts on the battle field?
Oh right. That can be justified.
RBG
And Cheney’s daughter is a piece of work, too. Oh, well. It’s all water under the damn.
Hmmmm.
Which is worse –
Cutting off a persons head and filming it for propaganda, or
Pouring water up a persons nose.
It’s funny, torture in medieval times meant specially trained Catholic priests would use specially designed instruments of pain, to cause any “heretics” (Basically people who didn’t agree with the Popes skewed interpretation of scripture) to renounce their faith. Many times resulting in death.
Torture today is basically defined as any act which causes another person discomfort.
With that, I can only say my ex-wifes cooking was torture…
Good points Brock. These people are acting like Dick Cheney invented Water Boarding, LOL.
They should research it and see how long it has been in existence.
While they are at it, they should research what true torture is, perhaps from some of the WWII POW’s or Vietnam POW’s.
Give me a break, this is childs play, in comparison.
Sorry,
But to those who are a squemish about this. We treat prisoners a hell of a lot better than who we fight against.
I also get the impression there are a lot of keyboard warriors here. I’ve been shot at, and will tell anyone the only thing on your mind is how you want to kill your enemy and you want to go home. If water up my enemies nose allows me to go home one day sooner I’ll provide the jug.
Didn’t we win two world wars without torturing enemy combatants?
Just sayin.
I am very apolitical but what I truly hate are double standards and hypocrisy.
This idea: “Waterboarding is no big deal, it’s just some water up a nose… and it works”.
If this is the case, it should be used for interrogations of American citizens, particularly in cases such as murder, serious fraud, and child exploitation, and whenever supporting evidence cannot easily prove an individuals guilt by itself. Furthermore, it should be instituted in all prisons throughout the United States as part of the routine for incarcerations for anyone believed to be involved in a network of criminal activity or simply has knowledge of criminal activity.
Either way, if this stuff is or is not torture or wrong then stop the double standard.
#14 war den
Uh yeah, detailed guidelines for something they’ve only done 3 times, go back to sleep.
#25 amlorusso
Shep, is the only reporter at Fox I can tolerate with the volume on.
Those of you that would justify torture deserve a little torture yourselves. Why not waterboard each other!? Give it a try it’s just a little water, it causes no permanent damage (save for that tiny little near death trauma to the psyche). Oh and please be sure you have a reanimation crew nearby, we wouldn’t want you dying by accident.
Really, they should stop waterbooarding and replace it with a device that it is socially acceptable for police to use on civilians:
The taser!
Clearly the taser isn’t torture.
So they should just taser these guys until they tell us where Bin Hidin is.
Plus would be valuable on-the-job training for cops to accumulate real world experience, like on how to handle a mouthy college student.
They could invite John Kerry to stand by in the room as a doormat and do nothing while some conscientious objector gets tased.
See … really they do need to replace waterboarding with a practice approved and tested on US citizens.
We live in a world full of soulless monsters, not all of them on the other side.
I can only paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: “When I hear anyone arguing for [torture], I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
Everyone can imagine some situation where they themselves would allow torture. The most often used example is a ticking nuke in a major US city and a person in custody who knows where it is.
So the issue is not so much that waterboarding is being done. It’s a question of who is using these techniques, whom they are using them on, who approves it and who knows about it.
Personally, I do not believe that this is only being done because of some cruel, out of control CIA agents.
For those who say it’s not so bad, or it’s not as bad as what they do, or just kill ’em all, might I suggest a little remedial reading?
This is all borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition.
They were very successful in converting people to Christianity , though. You can’t fault the effectiveness of this technique.