Home > Alex Massie

Friday 10 February 2012

Waterboarding for Slow Learners

Tuesday, 9th March 2010

Astonishingly there remain some people who don't think that waterboarding prisoners rises to the level of torture. In Dick Cheney's off-hand formulation it's merely "dunking in water" - as though the process was some kind of ride at the funfair or comparable to having a bucket of gloop tipped over you in a TV game show.

Helpfully, Mark Benjamin has a piece at Salon explaining how it really works:

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.

[...]These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.

Then there's this:

The CIA's waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown. "In our limited experience, extensive sustained use of the waterboard can introduce new risks," the CIA's Office of Medical Services wrote in its 2003 memo. "Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness."

The agency's medical guidelines say that after a case of "psychological resignation" by a detainee on the waterboard, an interrogator had to get approval from a CIA doctor before doing it again.

I don't doubt that such techniques can, sometimes, "work" but that's not the same as supposing that the same, or better, more accurate, information could not have been unconvered using other means. And, anyway, if you end up with a dead suspect it's hard to claim that waterboarding "worked".

And, finally, there's this:

NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment."

Ah, the sweet science of torture.

Occasionally you hear people boasting about the medical supervision the CIA insisted upon during interrogations as though this advances the case that this was not torture in any commonly understood definition of the term. In fact it does quite the opposite: if you need doctors present to make sure that the suspects don't die during interrogation then the reasonable assumption must be that the suspects are being harshly mistreated and, in these instances, tortured.

Sometimes, of course, the argument is made that since US troops sometimes undergo waterboarding at SERE school it can't really be that tough, right? Wrong. Here's Matthew Alexander, a former CIA interrogator:

Another mischaracterization in Courting Disaster is Thiessen's claim that CIA water-boarding is identical to the water-boarding given American troops in training. Thiessen calls it "absurd" to believe we would torture our own troops. But if it were the same as the training given American troops, detainees would be told beforehand that it's temporary and voluntary; they'd have a codeword to make it stop at any time; and be reassured that it would not harm them permanently. Real water-boarding—unlike resistance training—exploits the real fear of death. The detainee does not know when, or if, it will stop.

And that makes all the difference in the world. Anyway, as Benjamin's piece details, these methods, used in conjunction with other techniques, were not used in the same way as at SERE. So that entire argument it utterly bogus. Again, the test is simple: if Saddam Hussein had treated a captured British or American soldier or spy in this fashion we would, quite rightly, have been outraged. But at least we might not have been surprised that this is how Saddam and his sons behaved.

Sic transit gloria Americana and all that.

Filed under: Terrorism (289 more articles) , Torture (56 more articles)

Previous Back to Alex Massie Next

Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (11)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Mills

March 9th, 2010 3:39pm Report this comment

Can you explain something:

It seems to matter a lot from a legal point of view whether some particular form of abuse constitutes torture. This may make some sense in the context of international law where the more serious a crime the more likely it is to attract a wider, international response, say by universal jurisdiction.

But in an ideal world prisoners should be treated humanely. They should be properly fed, should not be harmed in any way by their captors, and should have access to medical attention when required. This is surely the standard which civilised western countries should be aiming to meet.

So, if a guard slaps a prisoner around a bit, why should it matter from the point of view of our law, or of our public opinion, which is informed by journalists such as yourself, whether that abuse counts as torture. Article 3 of the ECHR draws a distinction between torture and lesser outrages which are described merely as inhuman or degrading.

Anyway, my question is why should we be consider it as something with which to be the least bit satisfied if waterboarding were, contrary to your very persuasive piece, held authoritatively not to be torture.

Unless, of course, one thinks that prisoners do not have to be treated properly, if, for example, one believes that some other interest, perhaps extracting the information that they may have, outweighs the interests of decency, humanity, and so on. And, if one thinks that, why would one not want only for the pain and suffering meted out to the prisoners to be the least necessary to achieve the desired results (leaving to one side the question of whether any form of torture is effective).

Vulture

March 9th, 2010 5:03pm Report this comment

Don't give a shit. Anything that helps stop Al Quaeda taking innocent lives is fine by me. And if they drown during the process, that's just an added bonus.

Whjen are we going to read Mr Massie bleating about the scores murdered every damn day by these crazies in Iraq and Pakistan? Grow up you stupid wimp.

Seth Owen

March 9th, 2010 5:35pm Report this comment

And of course, we get pro-torture commentary that proves the depravity of torture which erases any difference at all between us and them. These people would surrender our honor and values in a cowardly (and ultimately fruitless) search for safety.

ndm

March 9th, 2010 5:48pm Report this comment

Vulture writes:

-- Don't give a shit. Anything that helps stop Al Quaeda taking innocent lives is fine by me. And if they drown during the process, that's just an added bonus.

Vulture's ludicrous comment ignores the strong likelihood that the US mistreatment of Muslim prisoners serves primarily to radicalize Muslims.

Beer Moth

March 9th, 2010 6:02pm Report this comment

Here we go with the 'we mustn't surrender the moral high ground' baloney.

As long as supposed right-wing commentators are speaking up against the interrogation techniques of our forces and their allies; then we can rest assured that we are way ahead in terms of moral superiority. Especially when our opponents trot blithely on, drilling into people's bones, throwing people off tower blocks and parting them from their heads.

A little waterboarding might not be the nicest experience, but they all get to go home one day, and then use legal aid to bag a nice cash settlement.

We are the good, if stupid guys.

Vulture

March 9th, 2010 6:57pm Report this comment

@Ndm:

Isn't it strange that the countless daily atroctities visited by Muslims on non-Muslims don't serve to 'radicalise' non-Muslims?

Or could it just be that Islam is a barbaric, backward religion that we need to defend ourselves against by any merans in the book?

Olaf Rye

March 9th, 2010 7:17pm Report this comment

The answer is to torture and water-board in the field, extract intelligence, and then get rid of the bodies ! In this way, there is nothing for the media to explore and serve to lead people to the radical cause.

Vern

March 9th, 2010 8:20pm Report this comment

This is a theme much beloved of Mr. Massie and he argues his point well. I suspect he likes enraging his more gung ho commentators, flushing out their responses which he no doubt thinks exposes their characters and the weaknesses of their arguments.

However I would like to ask a question- why does he not also write about the ongoing campaign of drone bombings in the Pakistan border zones? These indiscriminately kill men women and children alike who have not even been given the opportunity to be tortured into a confession.

I suppose that the US govt's justification for this is that in times of war, this is what you have to do. Does Mr. Massie agree? And if so, then why is he so obsessed with water boarding which while cruel and no doubt unreliable at times, kills nobody, and harms no women or children?

I detect an inconsistency.

ndm

March 9th, 2010 8:21pm Report this comment

Vulture asks:

-- Isn't it strange that the countless daily atroctities visited by Muslims on non-Muslims don't serve to 'radicalise' non-Muslims?

It is not strange at all because, in fact, the West has been radicalized to the extent that many on the right seek to abandon hard-won civilazation in favour of the barbarity of the Gestapo or the KGB.

Vulture continues:

-- Or could it just be that Islam is a barbaric, backward religion that we need to defend ourselves against by any means in the book?

The idea that Islam alone is a "barbaric, backward religion" seems strange in a World where about 1 in 50 Jews is an indictable war criminal for having "settled" in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They comprise a far greater percentage of World Jewry than radicalized Muslims form among the World Islamic population. Indeed, we are often quoted that the British security forces are following 2,000 radicalized Muslims at any time. I would not be surprised were there not more than 2,000 indictable war criminals among Anglo-Israelis alone. The depth of British connivance with Israeli war crimes is shown by the fact that Britain has not arrested one of them on arrival at Heathrow Airport.

An important difference between the right and everyone else is that the right lives in a cocoon of truthiness and is utterly careless about observable reality. That is why Hitler was able to demonize Jews and have the German people accept his demonization, And it is why Western Islamophobes are able to rehearse their racism and their bigotry so casually. The left correctly damns those who so readily abandon the civilization built at great cost over the centuries. It is not Muslims that Western civilization has to fear it is those among the Western elite who wield power, through politics or the pen, and who seek to tear down the moral and legal strictures of our civilization and resort to the evil that is torture.

Much is made of the Jewish power behind neo-conservatism and its intellectual backing for the Iraq war. I think this analysis is misplaced. What Israel showed the Western right was that it was possible to descend into the evil of a militaristic bigotry and get away with it - as long as you were of and from the West. Israel has oppressed the Palestinian people for more than four decades in the worst human-rights violation by any Western nation since the Nazi occupation of Europe. And it has got away with it because there were too many in the West were willing to apologize for it and appease it through lying about it and their culpability in this inhuman oppression. Given that the most prevalent form of neo-Nazism in the West today is that of the Israeli Settlers it should be no surprise that those who so uncritically defend Israel, and by implication the settler movement, should so readily attach themselves to the intellectual wing of neo-Nazism known as neo-Conservatism.

I am waiting for one of them to write the My Struggle of our time. I doubt I will have a long wait.

DavidDP

March 10th, 2010 12:03am Report this comment

"Anything that helps stop Al Quaeda taking innocent lives is fine by me."

Anything, eh? No more votes until the emergency is past, that sort of thing? Can't have democracy distracting us from our goal after all.

You should join the Taliban- like you they will do anything in pursuit of their unholy goal. You seem to be a good match.

David Scott

March 10th, 2010 3:48pm Report this comment

Yeah! Because it shouldn�t be okay to abduct people, illegally torture them for years without due process, and not have to tell anybody about what we did to them. What kind of Nazis could be in favor of that! Thank all that is righteous for the ACLU! There is no more freedom in this country, but they keep trying anyway. Take a look at this: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-waterboarding-torture.html

Post comment