What is this "waterboarding" that Bush, Rice & Rumsfeld like doing so much?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2005-03-02.0542664085

An Open Letter to John Yoo

<snip>3. Waterboarding is most certainly torture.

In a LA Times article of January 23, 2005, Sec. of State Rice refused to answer a question of whether "waterboarding"—basically holding someone under water until they are ¾ drowned to get them to answer questions, is torture. "I'm not going to speak to any specific interrogation techniques," Rice said, adding that it was up to the Justice Department to define torture. You, Professor Yoo, were more forthright in the same article: "What the administration is saying is we're not going to torture people… What the administration does not want to say, and I think for good reasons too, is what methods the United States might or might not use short of torture." Well, isn't this reassuring. Except that the whole point is who defines what is "short of torture." And that's the Attorney General and President!

So if someone, say you, thinks waterboarding isn't torture and Bush and Gonzalez agree, then we can waterboard as much as we want without fear of legal repurcussions or challenges to the practice, no? You further explained regarding when waterboarding is or isn't torture: "It depends on the circumstances." Yet you also claimed that sleep deprivation for five days would be torture. But haven't doctors have shown that people can go weeks without sleep without any long term damage to the body? (I haven't slept for four weeks since my daughter was born, and I certainly didn't sleep more than a few hours a day for the entire time I was in Iraq.)

Can the same be said about repeated waterboarding? In fact, at our debate I asked you several questions which you didn't answer then, but which I very much hope you'll answer now so we can understand how you came to the decision that waterboarding isn't torture:

1. Have you ever waterboarded anyone? 2. Have you ever been waterboarded by anyone? 3. Have you ever watched someone being waterboarded?

I asked you these questions not to grandstand or shock the audience or even make you uncomfortable; but rather because I don't understand how you could imagine that waterboarding isn't torture unless you had some personal experience with the technique. Can you explain how you arrived at this opinion? I must confess I'm not sure I believe that you really feel that waterboarding in the real world (as opposed to training courses for intelligence and special forces personnel) doesn't have to be torture. After all, I invited you to take me into the bathroom with several witnesses and demonstrate how it could be done without being considered torture. Considering the criticism you've come under for your views, I would have assumed you'd have jumped at the chance to prove to a critic that the technique can have no long term impact. Nor were you willing to take me up on my offer and come with me to Iraq and meet some of the people who've been waterboarded by American personnel and explain your rationale to them. Both offers still stand if you change your mind.

Let me fill you in about waterboarding in case you don't know. Americans were the first to use it for interrogation in the 20th century, during the Spanish-American War against Filipinos. There was also a famous Nazi officer who was a specialist in water tortures, especially waterboarding. Dr. Ramdohr was his name, and he was a major figure at Ravensbruck concentration camp, the camp for women. His signature technique was described by Lord Russell (Scourge of the Swastika, 203) as this: "Ramdohr carried out the cruelest physical and mental torture....He also used to tied prisoners' hands behind their backs and make them lie on their stomachs on a table in such a way that their heads protruded over the end of the table where he had placed a chair on which there was a bowl of water; he then gripped the women by the hair and pushed their faces into the water." Ramdohr was tried by a British Military Court Martial at Hamburg in the British Occupation Zone that sat from May 12, 1946 to March 2, 1947 and sentenced to death by hanging.

[AlamoDemoc]

1. they were snorkeling, no?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Someday I pray they'll have to answer publicly for chosing to torture

these people.

They are playing with words, changing meanings, while everyone on the face of the earth would automatically recognize they're filthy liars with absolutely no honor, and not a shred of decency.

If only it will happen in our lifetimes, and not after they have all died peacefully in their sleep as old people.

Thank you for helping to explain more clearly how this truly evil crime is committed. The blame goes all the way to the "top."

[NNN0LHI]

4. I am not much on praying but I sure am hoping for the same thing...

...as you for these sick criminals.

Don

[izzie]

3. It is sort of like the old time dunking chairs the Puritan used.

And they most likely came out of the Middle ages but I would have to do some looking up on that to be sure

[soothsayer]

5. The CIA's been doing this a long time, right? We teach other

countries how to do this sort of crap, don't we? I'm glad people are finally waking up to it.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Yes. Yes. And me too n/t

[NNN0LHI]

7. They hate us for our "waterboarding" I betcha n/t

[NNN0LHI]

8. I was with a group of about ten people yesterday and they wanted to...

...know what "waterboarding" was?

I explained it to them and the subject was changed immediately.

It was like don't tell us what our government is doing.

Don

[KayLaw]

9. It's sick

Sick and evil and the work of filthy psychopaths.