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.
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.
#24
The benefit of being a keyboard warrior is you don’t have to think that violence is the solution to every problem all the time, but mostly it allows one to remember that more violence never ends anything, certainly not violence itself. It is only a very temporary solution to an immediate problem.
I sympathise with what you’ve been through, I really do, and I understand why you feel that way, but it still doesn’t make torture okay. Shepard Smith from Fox News nailed it live on air with this.
“We are America!” he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!”
Now you’ll no doubt have something keyboard-warrior-ish to say about a news presenter, so I suggest you go ask John McCain, who got shot at too, how he feels about torture.
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.
If the Fundies had their way,they would return us to a happier,simpler time.
A time when there was no science and a beneficent yet omnipotent yet delinquent,cloud being,the ultimate law giver.
Dunking stools,stocks,witch burnings as public entertainment and punishment,all displays of piety and unctuousness with the cries of the deflicted as sweet,sweet music to the zealot’s ears.
This was pleasing to god,they proclaimed.
This shameful past was much of what the constitution was designed to protect against.
Now this document that protected a nation for over 300 years needs protection itself,from those who openly weep patriotic tears of joy at its mention but who turn around and give corporations more rights and privileges and remove them from its once sovereign individuals.
The worlds smallest minority wants you to donate to their hypocritical cause and of course vote for the corporate figure head of their choice in the mid terms.
The choice is yours,keep drinking that right wing kool-aid or rotate the glad hander’s in and out until the lobbyists bankrupt the robber barons trying to control what was never theirs to begin with.
Go vote this November even if their is no choice on the ballot.
A government backed by constitutional authority
is the solution,not the problem!
“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.”
And what disgusts me is that 24 is one of the most popular shows on TV, something which tells me all I need to know about the general US public or, perhaps, human beings in general.
#34 Check out #1. I am a ‘fundie’.
I also know we executed Japanese Officers for waterboarding people. Torture is not worth it for the US, if we are the concensus builders, and want everyone to just ‘get along’ then there’s no way this moves things towards that goal.
The English Crown tortured (as did many kings), having essentially a department of torture. Did it do any good, or just give that government a way to give the ‘criminals’ or ‘enemies of the state’, ‘what they deserved.’
Does that sound too different from the talk today?
amlorusso
I agree that not being there allows a more overall perspective. That being said man will always be violent nothing, will ever change that. Our torture issues have been blown way out proportion.
Sometimes bad things happen in conflict and maybe they those things should stay out of public eye raised on Hollywood war movies.
clorox
Peanut –
“I am very apolitical but what I truly hate are double standards and hypocrisy. ”
Me too.
I agree 100% – Any “American Citizen” who is involved with planning mass killings including bombing attacks against other citizens should most definately by subject to advanced interrogation techniques. And this should be publicized and become common knowledge.
Maybe this would cause them to stop and ponder their future before they carried out any attacks.
As it is, if they are caught alive, they will live for decades in better circumstances than many have ever lived in. If in the course of their bombing they die, most of them believe they get their 79 virgins.
I only hope the virgins are all old men.
And this practice stopped some terrorist plots according to documents declassified by the Obama administration.
What particularly disgusts me is the ACLU wannabees like Choneyman who are not only proud of the use of anti-torture talking points, but find it morally defensible.
#39 MikeN
Ahh the Jack Bauer defence. An oldie but a goodie.
So it immoral NOT to use torture to reveal terrorist plots? You, sir, are a barbarian.