There’s been a lot made of waterboarding as a horribly cruel torture that’s way beyond the pale for America to use. Well, a Fox News reporter decided to find out for himself what waterboarding is all about. He subjected himself to the same training that our CIA interrogators get and got waterboarded.
As you’ll see, he didn’t come off the board sobbing, his spirit irrevocably broken. He was mentally nor physically crippled. He demonstrated that waterboarding, when performed consistent to the rules and regulations our interrogators follow faithfully, does exactly what it is supposed to do.
Make no mistake. Waterboarding is harsh. It uses everything we’ve learned about the universal fear each human holds of drowning. It’s not something we use on every Tom, Dick, and Mahmoud that passes through our interrogators’ hands. I would certainly rather we never had to use it. The world would be a nicer place if Islamists weren’t trying to kill us or, at the very least, if captured Islamists would tell us everything they know right off the bad.
But the world isn’t like that and we need to employ people willing to do rough things. I’m amazed that we have managed to refine this technique to the point where it causes not even temporary damage.
More after the jump.
I’m waiting for Congressional Democrats, the ACLU, and the Red Cross to step up to the plate and tell us why this procedure, which we can now see for ourselves, needs to be completely outlawed and conflated to such things as breaking of bones and pulling out of fingernails. Paul Mirengoff thinks that Republicans need to make this a campaign issue and I find it very hard to disagree.
The campaign point is very simple. Waterboarding is not torture but it is a very effective means of getting vital information from people who are trying to murder us. Democrats need to be very precise in telling us exactly why they want to make such a thing illegal. They need to tell us what they think we should use that will be better.
UPDATE: SmallWarsJournal makes a rather impassioned argument that “Waterboarding is Torture…Period”. The post is worth your time to read because it is perhaps the most reasoned argument against waterboarding I’ve yet seen.
I believe it’s wrong on two major points. First, the author makes the common but wrong assumption that if we don’t “torture”, then the folks who capture our soldiers won’t either. We know from hard experience that this is completely wrong. In fact, John McCain, whom the author uses as an example of one who’s been subjected to waterboarding, is a perfect example of how our enemies in wartime don’t give a hoot about our limits on interrogations. We can cite examples going back through two world wars as well. Our “moral authority” does not translate into more humane conditions for our prisoners. It never has and it never will.
The second mistake the author makes is to use the “Well, the Vietnamese used this technique, so it must be torture”. Yes, it’s true that the Vietnamese used waterboarding. So did the Nazis. They also used plenty of other techniques that no reasonable person would say is torture as well. Should we use none of those techniques simply because evil people have used them as well? Our decisions for what constitute torture shouldn’t much take into account what other people have done in other places at other times. Just because the NVAs, Viet Cong, or Nazis did something shouldn’t preclude us from doing them if, after a real discussion, we decide that 1) what we’re doing is necessary, 2) what we’re doing is effective, and 3) what we’re doing is something we can live with after we’ve done it. That is the discussion I don’t think we’re having with any clearness of thought and sense of purpose. It’s time we had that discussion without hyperbole.
You’re right. My granddaughter would consider it absolute torture if she were restrained and someone poured spiders all over her. Any kind of spiders.
There’s physical torture and there’s mental torture. Physical torture is probably definable – I don’t think it’s possible to define mental torture. Waterboarding is difficult to categorize – it’s physical, but since there’s no physical damage, it’s really mental. We all have our boogeymen – being able to use someone’s individual boogeyman is the key to mental “torture” – that’s the whole thing about the muslim thing about women that was used. It’s so absurd to call something like that torture.
And you know what’s worse? I have no doubt whatsoever that those who are condemning torture in _any_ form, would not hesitate in the least to use it if it suited their purpose. They’d just redefine it…you know…like “re-education” programs.
Please!! This is of no use. It makes a huge difference when you know who is waterboarding you and you know you can stop it at any time. The reporter gets to get up, dry off, and go home to his family. Waterboarding is torture and was condemned by the US government when it was used by other nations.
As Kelly notes, the Fox reporter was not ‘waterboarded’ in any way comparable to teh real thing, physically or psychologically. The Nance account at Smallwarsjournal has it right (he should know, he’s a military expert): it’s not simulated drowning, it’s real (controlled) drowning. The Fox display was far from that; more like the kind of fraternity prank Rush Limbaugh would like us to believe is actual waterboarding. And I think you miss the point of whether our enemies will also torture. They always have, whether Nazis, the Japanese in WW2, or the north Vietnamese. The idea was that we were supposed to be better than that, a notion we’re apparently now willing to give up. And now, for the first time, when our enemies subject captured GIs to this, we can hardly complain. After all, by our new standards, they’re not being tortured at all. Don’t you think there’s a reason why only John McCain, among the GOP candidates, is adamantly set against this? Because he knows what torture is, and he also knows that it doesn’t work.
Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.
I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.
God will appreciate it.
[...] Afghan detainees have no U.S. rights Torture is something that a news reporter would not do voluntarily… __________________ "You get the respect that you give" – [...]
Not torture? The reporter lasted 5 seconds and knew he could stop it at any moment.
I am guessing that for prisoners, it lasted for more than 5 seconds even if they asked it to stop. Prisoners were waterboarded dozens of times in a short amount of time.
No, it’s not torture. Torture has a specific definition which does not include waterboarding, which is why the Bush administration could specifically make waterboarding an approved EIT. If it really was torgture, then the administratino could not have done that any more than they could have made bank robbery an approved way of fixing the deficit.
Waterboarding could could be torture, legally, if Congress wanted it to be. The Democrats have had the chance to make it that way for many years. But they didn’t because if they had passed a law making waterboarding torture, say, in 2002 when Nancy Pelosi found out about it, then they wouldn’t have been able to use it to their political advantage. Don’t like it? Take it up with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.