Civil Rights • National Issues • National Politics • War

WATERBOARDING – The Unholy American Bargain – UPDATED

November 2, 2007
by Celeste Fremon
33 Comments

waterboarding-illustration2.gif

UPDATE: The press releases started arriving in my email box at about 1:30 PM Friday stating that California’s DiFi will be supporting Mukasey’s confirmation. (Color me not surprised. Diane’s always regretted that the U.S. isn’t a monarchy.) Patrick Leahy says NO. Chuck Schumer, who has boxed himself into a corner on this one, is also voting to confirm.

This means Mukasey has the votes to clear the Judiciary committee.

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The opposition to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey continues to grow as he refuses to say where he stands on waterboarding—specifically, whether or not it is torture.

He has gone so far as to call it “repugnant”—which is just an upstreet way of saying “icky.” But Mukasey says he does not know whether it violates U.S. laws against torture. “I don’t know what the technique is,” he said. Not exactly believable. But, okay, just for discussion’s sake, let’s explore the issue: We’ve all heard the one sentence description of waterboarding, that it’s simulated drowning. But, what is it like really?

It turns out that the term “simulated drowning” isn’t quite accurate. NPR’s Alex Chadwick interviews counterterrorism consultant Malcolm Nance, who has trained hundreds of American service members to be ready for interrogation techniques. Nance has been waterboarded himself, and he’s applied the technique to others. It’s torture, he says , pure and simple. It doesn’t simulate drowning. It is drowning. The only reason that someone to whom it is applied doesn’t actually die, is because the torturer stops.

It turns out that waterboarding has been used as a torture technique since the Spanish Inquisition. The Japanese who used it were tried for war crimes after World War II. And, according to Nance, anyone who calls it by anything other than its real name is simply spinning the facts.

You can hear him describe the precise details of waterboarding here. And then for additional information and views on the subject, go to his blog, where he writes:


We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture….


“If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives,” Nance says, “you support the use of that torture on any future American captives.”

And you not only support it, he says, you have guaranteed it.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but “not all of it reliable.” Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.


The sad, disingenuous performance of Judge Michael Mukasey simply serves as one more disturbing reminder of the fact that we have an administration willing to trade our national honor and the future safety of our service men and women for a technique that gives us the illusion of safety. This isn’t just evil. It’s also….what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, yeah: insane.

33 Comments

  • Gee I am sure glad that Al-Qaeda is paying attention to what the liberals blathering about water-boarding have banned it from their torture methods.

    Now they will only be left with: Drilling hands, Servering limbs, blowtorch to skin, head in a vice, etc…

    MAY 24–In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like “blowtorch to the skin” and “eye removal.” Along with the images, which you’ll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. …..

    http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html

  • I’d be wary of using terms like “insane” so loosely. Rosa Brooks of the L A Times called Bush and Cheney just that recently, but she ended up sounding more insane herself than them. What word is left for guys like Ahmenahjad (sorry bad spelling), Zarqawi or Kim Jong Il or the warlords in Mogadishu who run their countries by having public disembowelments, and are the kinds of guys we’re fighting?

    Yes, we have to stay “above” that level, but you’re handing them a victory by calling our own leaders as bad as them.

    It is pathetic that the Bush admin. can’t find spokespeople for its policies who can do a better job; it’s one meltdown after the other at the Senate these days. It shows they don’t have their policy well-articulated to begin with. (But neither do the dem candidates, from Hilary on down.)

  • No, Bush isn’t insane. He is merely a frat-boy sociopath who has absolutely no business being amywhere near executive power. But I must say that if you watch him on TV with the sound turned off you will get quite a scare.

  • For the record, I didn’t say the administration officials were insane, just the policy. I considered a less freighted word, but frankly, of late, when it comes to policies that do terrible damage on multiple levels AND don’t work, I think insane is the best descriptor. (Psychotic works for me too.) I’m tired of pulling punches.

    In truth, I think we have some state corrections policies that fall into the insane category. (That’s a whole other discussion.) But their longterm implications aren’t anywhere near as far reaching and calamitous as the Bush administration’s inexcusable choice to move the line on torture.

  • Celeste, there is an interesting piece today over at hallaballoo that cites a 2004 intervied by Gary Trudeau with the AP. Trudeau told the AP that his first cartoon for the Yale DAILY NEWS dealt with stories about George Bush’s frat, DKE, branding new pledges with hot irons. As Tristero, author of the piece, poinst out, remember when Rush likened Abu Gharib to “Fraternity Pranks?” Bush has a history of such behavior. Setting firecrackers in frogs as a kid, his now famous interview with Tucker Carlson where he made fun of Carla Faye Tucker – the first woman to die in Texas’s lethal injection chamber in modern times, and his glee in reporting death sentences during the presidential debates. I don’t think the term “sociopath” is out of bounds for this man.

  • RLC. No argument from these parts. For me, the exchange about Carla Fay Tucker that you mention, recorded by (conservative) Tucker Carlson, told me everything I will ever need to know about George Bush’s fundamental character.

  • I would argue that those who would waterboard, and those who support waterboarding (or other forms of physical torture) have revealed aspects of their psycho-sexual development and maturity that is infinitely more revealing and accurate, than any bit of (mis)information which could be revealed by those experiencing such a procedure. I am more willing to trust what it tells me about the implementer of the practice, than I am willing to trust what the recipient of the practice reveals.

  • Don’t be so stupid. If Mukasey says that waterboarding is torture and he becomes the U.S. Attorney General, then there would be a lot of people pulled up for crimes after they thought that what they did was legal.

    Basically, the Democrats are blocking the nomination of anyone with their unreasonable requirements. Either the guy is qualified or not. Cut it out with all this grandstanding and revised and unacceptable conditions for ratification.

    Nice picture, Celeste. Maybe you could have one of what terrorist victims look like to show the full picture.

  • Looks like Mukasey will be confirmed, that they have the last 2 dem votes needed. Overriding reason being, that he’s not justifying anything illegal — his job is to enforce the laws as they exist, Congress’ to change them.

    From a moral and legislative standpoint, even Hilary and the

    other candidates waffle about details of what constitutes “torture,” not because they are sociopaths who enjoy it, but because it’s just awkward publicly drawing lines in the sand over it. “We’ll do X, but not Y,” always sounds horrific whatever they say they’d do. Then the enemy takes these quotes, reproduces them in the Arab world out of context.

    Meanwhile, we have Ahmedinijad denying the obvious, that they even have gays, let alone admitting, “Yeah, we hang them, but we don’t waterboard.” As long as he has nothing on tape admitting it, it doesn’t exist, right? What’s being open within the context of our society, puts military people in a self-compromised position elsewhere, whatever they do. (Ditto with committing to a pullout date from Iraq, or a number of other issues.)

    I’d look at a nominee’s track record and overall views as a better barometer.

  • Gumby, thanks for saying something. It was a spam catcher issue.

    Next time that happens email me. My spam catcher is over zealous about the items it holds for moderation (which it emails me about), but is usually pretty accurate about the comments it actually spikes as spam.

    But every so often it seems to have a bout of extreme paranoia, and then it takes to spiking people it ought to view as friends. I don’t see it unless I check the spam cache, which I rarely do unless forced to do so.

    (I find that scrolling through all those penis enhancement and teens-with-barn-animals posts contributes nothing positive to my general outlook on the species in which we all claim membership.)

  • Woody raises a valid point. And that is why I argued back when Mukassey was selected that the Senate Dems should insist as a nonegotiable demand that he appoint an independendent counsel to look into the mess at DOJ.

    On another note – once again DiFi gives her constituents the finger and decides to vote “Yes”. Thanks Diane!

  • Celeste, this is all very interesting, but you have been strangely silent on Carona’s indictment. Is he a close friend? What gives?

  • CLF….

    Good point. Since it’s being covered so extensively, I’ve not jumped in. And, no, I don’t know the dude. Baca, yes—so the Teflon Baca factor tends to affect me if I’m not hyper vigilant, because I like him personally. But with Carona I have no such pleasant associations.

    With your inspiration, I’ll post something tonight when (unfortunately) I’ll be cooped up at home working on something else—after I take a break to run with Miz Dog.

    Thanks for bugging me on the subject.

  • The armed thug dictator of Chad, Idriss, has arrested French aid workers and even airline attendants who were planning to take some orphans to France for adoption, claiming they were planning to harvest the kids’ organs among other evil crimes. (I don’t know statistics about journalists there, but referring to the other thread, I’d bet that Chad is up there close to Somalia and Nigeria for being “inhospitable.” Probably not the best idea to snoop into how these guys treat their unwilling prison guests.)

    He’d never have gotten such a bizarre idea into his own evil skull if it weren’t for the way the self-criticism of the western press is played up abroad, especially among the most ignorant parts of the Third World. Pictures like on this thread, are misinterpreted as “proof” that this is what America really does to its prisoners, in whosesale numbers.

    Some of our inherently anti-Republican or anti-capitalist press, which doesn’t need much persuading that the most deviant foreign accusations are correct, are happy to help spread this misinformation, undermining the sacrifices of the rank-and-file military who are made to seem evil. This in turn serves to negate the horrific things that go on in the world, and mutes criticism and outrage against them.

    This doesn’t mean we should self-censor to the point of not informing our own public, but this is something to keep in mind in choosing our words and the costs of hyperbole. As I’ve traveled the world as a writer and private traveler, it’s become very clear that the worst depictions of us put forth by the most radical self-critics, are the “realities” that stick and which they carry around about us.

    When it comes to leftists in Western Europe or unreconstructed East Bloc Communists, this results in anti- American rhetoric. In places like Pakistan, this means the common person has become so anti-American that even pre-teens not infrequently behead Pakistanis known to even just have American friends.

    The reality about waterboarding: It hasn’t been used since 2003, when it was used only on three of the most heinous terrorist suspects, and some in the CIA were certain it saved lives and yielded results. Mukasey just doesn’t want to imply that those who used it were criminals, nor to rule it out in very extreme cases where lives could be saved. So all this emphasis on it seems misplaced, and DiFi is right.

    (There’s a report about how in 2004 a top Justice Dept. official in charge of terrorism at the time, Levin, tried it on himself to see how bad it was, and felt like he was drowning, but believed it could be used for short periods of time under medical supervision. He was fired but did have an impact on scuttling it indefinitely.)

    Yes, let’s change the pace to a nice, simple sleazy story about corruption, hubris and the fall: Corona. His indicted assistant Deputy Haidl’s son is one of the three who did unspeakable things to a retarded girl on a pool table with a pool cue and soda bottle: the apple didn’t fall very far.

  • Snowflakes from the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .

    In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

    The memos, often referred to as “snowflakes,” shed light on Rumsfeld’s brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.

    Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. “Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists,” he wrote.

    Washington Post

  • Maggie, I don’t know how deeply you’ve been reading about the Chad/orphan thing, but it’s way strange. According to international humanitarian workers who interviewed the kids, out of th 103 “orphans,” 91 weren’t orphans at all but were living with a close relative.

    The parents and/or relatives were evidently told that the kids would have the opportunity to get a paid for boarding school education. I don’t know where the organ harvesting thing came from that you mention; that sounds like a reporting outlier.

    The main thing that’s being reported is that the kids were basically being snatched under false pretenses in a Pay-for-Adoption scheme.

    What this has to do with American’s being accused of engaging in torture is beyond me.

  • Yes, L A Res, you’re right. Somalia is just a distraction cooked up by Rumsfeld to distract the American people from Iraq, to make people think “they’re surrounded in the world by violent extremists,” and somehow, even liberal media like the L A Times are in on the plot.

    Celeste: I SAW Idriss talk about “the organ harvesting thing” on the BBC World News a night or two ago — you can find it online, I’m not real good about posting links unless it’s something I’m working on myself. And again, statistics to show that some 90% of the kids were deliberately duped: what I’m wondering, is where you got that, and your motives behind all this. Wow, that you believe that lunatic Idriss over the French and discount/ refuse to see what he said, and presume that I’m referring to “a reporting outlier” (huh? That’s supposed to show that you’re on the “in” with the inbred journalism lingo, so I’m clueless?), and that none of this has to do with discrediting the west without basis of evidence.

    Wow. Double wow.

  • Maggie, I don’t have some bigtime agenda in this. (And “reporting outlier” isn’t jargon. It’s simply a term I made up on the spot, but evidently not very successfully.) If I came off as snarky, it wasn’t intended.

    As you said I would, I did find the reference to Deby making the crack about organ harvesting (and sales of the kids to pedophiles).

    As for the orphans-not-being-orphans part of the story, I first heard it on NPR, but there are a bunch of references. Evidently, UNHCR, the International Committee for the Red Cross and UNICEF made a joint statement about having interviewed the kids and being told this by them. Now, I guess, they’re in the process of verifying the kids’ stories with their families.

    I found the figure of 91 of the 103 having families from Time Magazine.

    http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1679797,00.html

    But also here’s a link to Voice of America’s story on it:

    http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-11-02-voa46.cfm

    Clearly we don’t know what the bottom line really is. As the Christian Science Monitor said, it may be “French volunteer gallantry run amok.” Or it maybe something more profit-driven, as they’d evidently lined the kids up with adoptive families who had to pay up front, which the CSM said was really unusual.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p01s03-woaf.html

    Also, here’s another weird thing: it seems the charity people bandaged up some kids to make them look as if they were hurt, but the bandages turned out to be phony. Plus the papers that charity people filed with local officials made no mention of the fact that they were taking these kids out of the country, but only indicated they were transporting them within Chad—which is kinda illegal. Anyway, that’s why I asked how deeply you’d read into it. It’s not just a case of an African dictator making inflammatory accusations. It’s a completely bizarre story even without Deby’s “organ harvesting” paranoia.

    The London Times has one of the more complete articles on it.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2796771.ece

    My only quarrel with you was over your having linked Deby’s reaction to the incident to “anti-Republican, anti-capitalist press,” which seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch.

    It still does. So we may have to agree to disagree.

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    Okay, that’s it. I’ve had far too much fun for far too long reading about this issue. (And I have no one to blame but myself.)

    Night-night.

  • CNN has reporters in Chad Covering the story about the kidnapped orphans. You will see lots more news from CNN and other international reporters in Chad, so far it does not look good for the French. The reporters seem to have open access to the talk to the kids them selves and the reporters are looking for the families of these “orphans”

    He’d never have gotten such a bizarre idea into his own evil skull if it weren’t for the way the self-criticism of the western press is played up abroad, especially among the most ignorant parts of the Third World.

    Where does this information come from?? Sounds like some very fuzzy logic to me, and probably any rational individual.

  • Run, Run, Run Somalia is attacking the United States. President Bush please protect from all the attacks by the terrorists from Somalia. I am so scared, please torture any all terrorists. President Bush, learn how to treat terrorists and any of their associates from Vladimir Putin. Vladamir Putin knows how to deal with the terrorists and anybody who lives close to them.

  • L. A RES., you’ve just proved Woody right that your myopia about blaming everything on Iraq, and insistence that anything going on outside of Ira is a plot to distract from Iraq, is a tragi-comic farce of the leftist paradigm going on in the U. S. and yes, which gives the rest of the world their misinformed “proof” about what the U. S. and our western allies are “really” like. Maybe if you actually traveled around the world as much as I have instead of posting links from other leftist sources to “prove” your points, you’d know that far from “fuzzy logic,” first-hand interaction with people cuts thru the b. s. of all this propaganda to what is really going on in the world. By your bizarre logic, anyone who travels to a country and talks to the people and checks out first-hand situtions that get so mangled in the press (i.e., does what the other press does, but first-hand and without a filter), is just confusing themselves. They should stay home and read links instead.

    Whatever. Enjoy living in your splendid, isolated myopia. For your next holiday, I’ll send you a ticket to Chad or Somalia — have a great time there. Tell them all about how evil the U. S. is and how everything has to do with Iraq.

    Celeste, my linking the Chad issue to the anti-Western press which is out there coloring how the world sees the U. S. and its allies (which France is in the broader scheme of things, despite some well-publicized differences), is analogous to how one sees the U. S.’s intentions in Iraq or elsewhere.

    IF there’s a predisposition to look for a hostile agenda, it will be much easier to find. The U. S. hasn’t used waterboarding since 2003 when it was used 3 times; Mukasey isn’t saying he personally approves and expecting him to even express a personal opinion is inappropriate given his job, which is just to enforce the laws and avoid implying that anyone who used or might use the technique, is a criminal.

    The claims against France seem very far-fetched, stemming from evil, narrow minds predisposed against them and the West in general. I was in France just a few weeks ago and have family and friends there, so in addition to your links (thanks) I’m following the story locally and in the French press. (Sort of like Madonna’s problem with her adoption — on the other hand, Angelina Jolie is extolled for adopting all the kids she can. Seems awfully subjective to me.) It sounds like these kids only acquired “families” after there was an indication that they could shake down the French, who found them living in very dire circumstances. The idea that they’d have wanted to kidnap the kids for resale to wealthy French for any reason, is just an insulting assumption to make of the French people. (Like the equally ignorant but rampant assumptions being made about Americans in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.)

    (We’ve heard of similar problems in adoptions elsewhere, like Guatemala, where well-intentioned parents who think they did all the paper work have been accused by locals of evil intentions. Such rumors breed quickly in ignorant communities, fanned by the anti-American attacks of some of our own press. When the President of a country is among the most ignorant like in Chad or Nigeria or Zimbabwe — at least in Latin America, the rulers are usually from a more educated class — those falsely accused are in big trouble.)

  • Would love to know what the French press is saying. The French gov’t and the EU are pretty pissed—at Zoe’s Ark or whatever NGOs name is.

    And one can hardly view the UNHCR and the ICRC as rumor mongering, anti west-leaning crazies.. The latter is freaking Swiss and considers itself to be above…well…everything. (I’ve often thought that most exclusive club in the world isn’t the US Senate at all, it’s the International Committee for the Red Cross. Somebody actually has to die on the ICRC for a space to open up.)

  • What angers “liberals” like me, is when the clowns in the White House ramp up the fear and paranoia about “terrorists”, to justify torture. There are always conflicts all over the world, we do NOT need to take away any of our liberties under the guise of the “war on terrorism”.

    Maggie, are you telling us we are in danger in the U.S. from Somalia terrorists? There is a civil war in Somalia in which “local” civilians are victimized by all sides. That does not mean we (U.S.) are in danger from the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), or Somalia war lords. And yes I know there are some foreign Islamic Mujahideen fighters in Somalia. I have read a few books about Somalia after seeing the movie “Black Hawk Down” and nothing I’ve read makes me believe the U.S. is in grave danger from “terrorists” in Somalia. Our army could crush any threat from Somalia’s ICU or warlords like a cockroach. And I will borrow a line from General Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. army is not like the Iranian army, which has thugs with machine guns riding in the back of old pickup trucks.

    I am also sure Sheriff Baca is much more concerned with local “terrorist” street gangs in South Central Los Angeles.

    Here is a good documentary video about “Black Hawk Down”, to accompany the Hollywood movie version.
    http://www.amazon.com/Somalia-Intentions-Results-Official-Companion/dp/0970636601

  • L. A RES., you’ve just proved Woody right that your myopia about blaming everything on Iraq, and insistence that anything going on outside of Iraq is a plot to distract from Iraq

    I did NOT relate the war in Iraq to Somalia, that was done by Donald Rumsfeld. I just referenced something Rumsfeld wrote. And if we the subject is torture then Abu Ghraib and Iraq is relevant to the subject at hand.

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