Posted on 11/09/2007 6:14:39 AM PST by 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-
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I would want to know more about this guys background. Does he have an axe to grind against the government? Did he come forward on his own or did the Dims find him?
I would want to hear from fellow instructors opinions of this guys actual performance in the Navy.
“The line has been drawn, if you really cared to find out.”
No, I’m curious where various Freepers draw the line. Some advocate beheadings or even nuclear bombs.
I honestly don’t know where I stand on waterboarding, but waterboarding can in fact cause lung and brain damage and even death from organ failure. Has that actually happened? Probably not, but if it had, I don’t think we’d hear about it.
Sorry. You are wrong.
You’re not “compromising the principles of a free society” by torturing a spy, terrorist, or unlawful combatant. You’re fighting a war against that society’s enemies. The enemy doesn’t get the benefit of those principles, they just get the sharp end of the stick until they are dead or give up.
When you are defending your home, your country and your way of life, NO weapon is too terrible to use.
Yes, very. It will smash the restraints that sought to keep government our servant and not our master.
When did preventing each and every terrorist act become a requirement for national survival?
note #1 - this is in the WAPO, which picks and chooses what it sees fit, so there are many conflicting opinions of folks just as qualified as this dude’s
secondly, as I said on another thread concerning the Army sniper under charges for murder:
“......we should try first to capture any suspected insurgents, knock them out, implant a high-power transmitter/gps in them, Let them ‘escape’ and they can lead us back to more of them. .....”
In the process prior to releasing them, interrogate them, give them some juicy fake intel that they think their folks really need to know and they just could not resist going back to other insurgents.
call it IS, for Insurgent Sting. Bill Clinton can run the effort.
We should use swine blood and entrails every chance we get.
The key is not to do something to them that offends our sensibilities, but something that offends their sensibilities.
Who has been waterboarded? I’ve heard that 3 were, and thousands of lives saved, with no damage to the 3.
My point is that we don’t just use this interrogation method willy nilly or for the fun of seeing a jihadi squirm. Its use is limited, and EFFECTIVE.
That last word is what the protesters really don’t like.
“Torture is torture. It’s always wrong.”
BS. “Torture” is a VERY relative word. Locking someone up in a cell could be considered torture. Sending a kid to bed without supper could be considered torture. What you are saying is that scaring someone is torture.
You sound like the kid at my school that was screaming “Fighting is WRONG!!” while he stood there and three kids kick his ass.
When “principles” display a depraved indifference to human life, as yours do, they are not truly principles but flaws in character.
Sounds to me like you've been terrorised. The only question remaining is, who made you so afraid?
We are in a war, and the only proper method to raise these concerns would be in a private meeting with the President.
Imagine WWII hearings on whether we should be firebombing Dresden, etc? The democrats would need military protection. We simply are not the same country.
Waterboarding is nothing when compared to being forced to vomit up everything you had eaten for the last couple of days...
And that was just training...
Man-up you whimps. Stop your sniveling.
You are wrong. Completely.
Also, the “journalists” better learn to do some basic research, this guy is NO “Counter Terrorism Specialist” he's a SERE Instructor. This claim to give him a false aura of creidlibty is a out right lie by the supposed "journalist" writing this story.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/09/nance/index_np.html
I had the honor to be accepted for duty as an instructor at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in North Island Naval Air Station, California. I served in that capacity as an instructor and Master Training Specialist in the Wartime Prisoner-of-War, Peacetime Hostile Government Detainee and Terrorist Hostage survival programs.
It has been stated over and over again.
We do not use this technique routinely.
Which then indicates you have utterly no clue what you are talking about and have nothing at all rational to add to this discussion.
Nice you have feelings. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of catering to your ego at the expense of American lives.
War is an ugly thing, this war is even worse them most since our foes ignore all rules of civilized behavior. Learn to live with that fact.
What made you so arrogantly certain of the infallibility of your own emotion based opinions that you assume you can ignore all factual reality rather then have to debate anything that might challenge your ignorance based political dogmas?
I was quite confused by his title as well.
I went through Survival school.. even Advanced Beating as we called it (what the article calls ‘Peacetime Hostile Government Detainee and Terrorist Hostage’) at Fairchild AFB.
I’m still amazed that we are still having this debate. We are at War. You do everything and anything you can to win. Why do we think we must play nicely to people that want to kill us? I really think some people have lost their spines and minds.
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