The Water Torture

"The United States does not torture." The American people and the rest of the world listened to this evasive refrain on dozens of occasions, along with President Bush's vague allusions to new "tough", "alternative" tactics. Given what we now know about the Bush administration's use of "waterboarding", a.k.a the water torture, such proclamations can only be seen as contempt for American ideals, human rights and the rule of law, and an insult to our intelligence, dressed in the language of Orwellian newspeak.

The practice of restraining a victim with the head inclined downward, a cloth stuffed in his mouth, and pouring water down his breathing passages, goes back all the way to the Spanish Inquisition:

Often in combination with the rack was applied the “torture of water”. This was generally adopted when racking, in itself, proved ineffectual. The victim, while pinioned on the rack, was compelled to swallow water, which was dropped slowly on a piece of silk or fine linen placed in his mouth. This material, under pressure of the water, gradually glided down the throat, producing the sensation experienced by a person who is drowning. A variation…was to cover the face…upon which the water was poured slowly, running into the mouth and nostrils and hindering or preventing breathing almost to the point of suffocation. [1]

It is not, in fact, simulated drowning. It is actual drowning--albeit slow and controlled, and halted before actual death. All the usual drowning symptoms occur, including spasms, vomiting, water entering the lungs, panic, etc. Years later, victims often find themselves waking from sleep in panic, with the sensation of not being able to breathe.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo, and the Japanese, during WWII. Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo was hanged for war crimes which included waterboarding. Many lower-ranking Japanese officers were also sentenced. Waterboarding was used by the infamous Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia. It has been recognized as torture, and illegal, by U.S. generals going back to the Vietnam War.

Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong, according to countless politicians, legal experts, U.S. military officials, psychologists, journalists, veterans, etc. [2-6]. Wouldn't you know it, it's wrong even when we use it on really bad people. Here are the reasons, as if they bear repeating:

• Torture is a violation of fundamental human rights.
• Torture does not yield reliable information.
• Torture sets the wrong precedent, endangering our own soldiers.
  

When it comes to interrogation, it happens that humane methods and effective methods are one in the same. Consider the interrogation of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in early 2002:

Zubaydah was stabilized at the nearest hospital, and the F.B.I. continued its questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. An agent showed him photographs of suspected al-Qaeda members until Zubaydah finally spoke up, blurting out that "Moktar," or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had planned 9/11. He then proceeded to lay out the details of the plot. America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely.

It was an extraordinary success story. But it was one that would evaporate with the arrival of the C.I.A's interrogation team. At the direction of an accompanying psychologist, the team planned to conduct a psychic demolition in which they'd get Zubaydah to reveal everything by severing his sense of personality and scaring him almost to death.

This is the approach President Bush appeared to have in mind when, in a lengthy public address last year, he cited the "tough" but successful interrogation of Zubaydah to defend the C.I.A.'s secret prisons, America's use of coercive interrogation tactics, and the abolishment of habeas corpus for detainees. He said that Zubaydah had been questioned using an "alternative set" of tactics formulated by the C.I.A. This program, he said, was fully monitored by the C.I.A.'s inspector general and required extensive training for interrogators before they were allowed to question captured terrorists.

...The tactics were a "voodoo science," says Michael Rolince, former section chief of the F.B.I.'s International Terrorism Operations. [7]

The torture of Zubaydah, and thus the end of getting any reliable information from him, is just one in a mountain of sad examples over the past eight years, in which the Bush administration has demonstrated its disregard for human rights, international law, and reality.

I know it sounds corny, but I really do love America. That's why it agonizes me to see the U.S. embrace dark-age barbarism, lies and deceit at the highest levels of its democratic institutions.

One strength of our fragile democracy is the possibility for self-correction and positive change. The American public did see through the Bush administration's lies and successfully pressured Bush to (sort of) ban torture in mid-2007. The public supported two candidates in the 2008 elections who both opposed water torture (John McCain having been himself a victim of torture). On Thursday, President-elect Obama's pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder, said unequivocally at a Congressional hearing that waterboarding is torture.

But Bush's attorney general refused to investigate interrogators who employed waterboarding, and Dick Cheney has repeatedly defended the practice. Bush, Cheney, and other officials explicitly condoned and authorized the use of waterboarding on multiple documented occasions. [8]

This is no small matter: waterboarding is a war crime. Japanese officers and generals were jailed for use of the practice on American soldiers in WWII. Ordinary American citizens are investigated, tried, and jailed every day for crimes that are far less serious. Are elected officials, and their appointees, above U.S. and international law?

In my opinion, it is not enough to merely end the practice of waterboarding. If we as Americans have any integrity, not to mention concern for the future well-being of American POW's, George W. Bush and all responsible parties ought to stand trial for war crimes.

References:
[1] History of Torture Throughout the Ages, by George Ryley Scott, 2005
[2], [3], [4], [5], [6]
[7] Vanity Fair, 2007
[8] CIA Tactics Endorsed in Secret Memos, 2008