Waterboarding Is Torture, Says Ex-Navy Instructor (SERE)

The Washington Post ^ | Nov 9, 2007 | Josh White

[RDTF]

A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.

Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless.

"In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat," Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. "It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."

-snip-

If Mohammed faced waterboarding for 90 seconds, Nance said, about 1.2 gallons of water was poured down his nose and throat while he was strapped to a board. Nance said the SERE school used a board modeled after one from Southeast Asia, though it had leather straps instead of metal clamps.

SERE attendees expect to be released and assume that their trainers will not permanently harm them. Nance said it is "stress inoculation" meant to let U.S. troops know what to expect if they are captured. "The SERE community was designed over 50 years ago to show that, as a torture instrument, waterboarding is a terrifying, painful and humiliating tool that leaves no physical scars -snip-

[DCPatriot]

I agree with MOST of what you said...which again, reinforces my recent post to you that over the years, we've seen eye to eye more often than not.

However,...

...IMO, torture has always been deeds that leave physical scars...severe beatings, broken bones,burns, cuts, fingernails, etc..

Waterboarding is torture, IMO, but it's psychological.

What I wouldn't necessarily like to see is waterboarding being the STANDARD method of interrogation of suspected insurgents.

Used in proper context, it's a valuable tool to use in order to save lives, but let's face it...the jerks who were involved in the Abu Graib fiasco, shouldn't have our blessing to waterboard prisoners for their amusement.

[RDTF]

the only thing I am going to chime in here to you is this. People like you are what the terrorists base all their planning on. They bank their efforts on the simple truth that we value human life so much that it will tear us apart internally (with debates like this), and know that it weakens the squeamish western world to their barbaric ability to justify what they do to human beings.

They do not value human life and make that very clear. Osama Bin Laden himself has been quoted saying that this is the difference between us and them. If we want to defeat these so called humans, we have to learn to think like them without compromising what our country stands for, it’s that simple. We should use waterboarding, or whatever it takes to stop them. They need to fear us and consider us irrational, the same way we do them.

[gridlock]

Bully bully!

[Romulus]

torture has a specific legal definition,

George Orwell, please call your office.

[MindBender26]

No problem at all. You simply reward good intel and punish the bad.... and confirm everything.

Very simple.

[George W. Bush]

Well, I was in military (USAF) and intel (Arabic Linguist). I didn’t get the waterboard...

...so you're just another uninformed opinion.

The description of this resistance training are that they asked for volunteers.

Tell me, in detail, why you wouldn't volunteer for the demonstration since it's not really torture?

If we start taking action in Iran and use our special forces in preliminary scouting and prepositioning and for weapons targeting, would you have any problem with the Iranians using waterboarding and other torture methods against our special forces to obtain information? As you know, our special forces aren't always in full uniform on such missions, making them a legitimate target for the Iranians.

So, would the Iranians be justified in it? Would you object if they decided to broadcast such "interrogations" worldwide on live TV? If you do object, what moral or legal basis would you, as a defender of torture, use to condemn it?

[wordsofearnest]

I agree and I believe I heard that the number of times we have used “waterboarding” could be counted on one hand.

[MrB]

It is our own military who is most endangered when we do not uphold the Geneva Convention fully.

Seriously, you're avoiding my point. You assert that if we DON'T uphold the Geneva Convention fully, our people will be subject to mistreatment outlawed by the convention. I don't see how you can get around the assertion of the converse, that our upholding of the convention will protect our people from mistreatment. And this latter simply is NOT true.

[chrisser]

The point was that people were advocating the use of torture to prevent the killing of innocent people, rather than for the preservation of the nation. I was just pointing out that if we go down that road, there is going to be a heck of a lot of torturing going on.

I don't see anyone implying that torture be used against any threat of killing innocents. IMHO, implied in this discussion is that torture or near-torture is used:
1) against an enemy
2) during wartime
3) by either the military or the intelligence services
4) when the enemy does not agree to abide by any standards of warfare (such as Geneva)
5) when the information desired involves the conspiracy to commit an act that will likely result in mass civilian casualties
6) when there is a reasonable belief that the information expected to be obtained cannot be obtained by other means or cannot be obtained by other means in time to avert the action in #5

Maybe I'm not summarizing the shared concept accurately, but I suspect that if any of the above are not true, than most would deem torture or near-torture objectionable.

[gridlock]

Tell me you wouldn’t pull the guy’s parts off to save your kid(s). Or, more importantly, tell *them* you wouldn’t do whatever was necessary to keep them safe.

I would delight in going after this guy with a screwdriver and a firepoker, but I am not King. My delight does not define the law.

[gridlock]

So, how did that whole Vietnam adventure work out, anyway...

[varyouga]

Let's say you had very good intelligence that certain people planted a large bomb somewhere. But only those people knew where it was.

This is a very probable scenario and has most likely happened before.

I would not be opposed to a safe psychological interrogation technique like waterboarding. It does no damage if done properly.

Even if the detainee is innocent it comes down to this - A potentially innocent person thinking he's drowning for a few minutes or multiple 100% innocent people being killed if we don't get the information.

If proper waterboarding has saved at least 1 innocent life, it's worth it. Any innocent people waterboarded might have been scared, but they are still alive and uninjured.

[Mariner]

Having been on the waterboard in Warner Springs CA, I can attest to the effect it has on one's mind.

Absolute terror. A willingness to say/do anything to make it go away. If one was to be waterboarded...as a demonstration, and then told they would be waterboarded twice a day, everyday until they told everything they know...it wouldn't be long until they told everything they know.

[redstateconfidential]

“..When did preventing each and every terrorist act become a requirement for national survival?”

How egalitarian,hope it never happens to anyone we know,..then us who love to parse my feel different when that one little terrorist act hits us personally, oh...how we will rage then.
Tell you what ,the Muzzies who are coming for your family , town and state can go to the Green room for warm showers, gift packages, gentle conversation and care bear packages to send home,..mine can go to Iron Room Pork Waterboard Hellhouse. I’ll just make sure to keep on my side of the country.

[MrB]

And how long did the physical “lasting effects” last once it stopped?

2 minutes? 2 hours? 2 days?

Or should that not be a factor, as the troll on this thread asserts we should not inflict any pain at all and simply put the guy in a comfy chair, serve him tea, and ask him polite questions?

[Shryke]

Would you rather live in a country that routinely tortures people or live in a country that does not, but will have a major city vaporized by a terrorist nuclear weapon within the next ten years? I would choose the latter, and I suspect you would too

I would prefer the former. You fail to mention that democracy utterly collapses when all semblance of security is taken away - which would of course would happen in the case of losing a major US city.

You also fail to mention that the people we "routinely torture" willingly and gleefully ignore any and all treaties covering the conduct of warfare, and view civilians as the best targets. Why do you insist there are no consequences to that? Why are these filthy animals given Geneva-abiding human rights?

I will make a final comparison:

They saw the heads off of living, breathing, US CIVILIANS, on camera.

WE severely scare them, with water.

I can't grasp where we are doing something immoral.

[varyouga]

Hmm...then why is it that people submitted to it comment on the physical pain?

They are most likely being waterboarded improperly. Water is not supposed to enter the lungs.

I'm sure simulated drowning is close to physical pain but there is no actual damage done.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

I would like to add here that the esteemed British historian, Alistair Horne, author of two books on the French-Algerian War, has concluded that the "coercive interrogation" methods adopted in the city of Algiers (and depicted in the semi-documentary film, The Battle of Algiers) were, in fact, successful. The French were able to control the rebels who were using bombs to terrorize the city much as is happening now in Iraq.

(The French were using various interrogation/torture techniques including electrical shocks. They concluded that these methods were necessary, because the rebel force structured itself in a pyramid of three-man cells such that almost no one knew more than two other members. When they captured a rebel, they made it instantly clear to him that he would have to give up the other two members of his cell and any real-time operations.)

(Although the French won The Battle of Algiers, they lost the war...for reasons that are not altogether clear to me. I gather that they suffered a collapse of will...certainly that is the way many who fought on the French side felt, including the OAS members who repeatedly attempted to assasinate the appeaser, Charles De Gaulle (as fictionalized in The Day of the Jackal).)

Unlike us, the French had the option of giving up and going home. I don't believe that we have that option. I believe that all those people in the twin towers ~were~ at home when this war started.

[MindBender26]

No problem at all. I simply make my case to the jury and ask them what they would have done.

It’s like a case I had in law school. Man was cited for 115 in a 55 zone. Good car, empty open road. We established he was taking wife, who was in labor, to the delivery room at hospital.

State said “There are no exceptions.”

I argued “any port in a storm” but made the most points by asking the jury members, with their wife screaming in labor in the seat next to them, what would they have done?

Got a NG in 7 minutes.

[gridlock]

Used in proper context, it's a valuable tool to use in order to save lives, but let's face it...the jerks who were involved in the Abu Graib fiasco, shouldn't have our blessing to waterboard prisoners for their amusement.

See, that is the problem. When you set a policy, that policy is going to be abused. That is why setting policy is such a tricky business.