Waterboarding vs. Torture

Throughout the last four years, there has been a lot of debate over the topic of waterboarding, and whether it should be defined as "torture" or not.

Here is the definition of torture, courtesy of dictionary.com:

tor⋅ture [tawr-cher]

–noun

1.	the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.

2.	a method of inflicting such pain.

3.	Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.

4.	extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.

5.	a cause of severe pain or anguish.

Notice that each of these definitions emphasizes the infliction of pain. And how much "pain" was inflicted upon the three suspected terrorists who were waterboarded? Sadly for critics, the answer is none. When an enemy combatant is waterboarded, their body is tilted back and their nose is covered with a wet towel to make the suspect feel as though he is drowning. It is certainly relevant to ask whether they actually are drowning or not. Again, the answer is no.

Let us take a good look at the news around the world, in order to have a greater understanding about what torture really is.

Iraqis pour out tales of Saddam's torture chambers

BAGHDAD — Pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened, fill a bookshelf. Jail cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, line the corridors. And the screams of what could be imprisoned men in an underground detention center echo through air shafts and sewer pipes.

Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein's Shop of Horrors

Writing in The New Republic, foreign correspondent Robert Kaplan recalled the treatment meted out some years back to Robert Spurling, an American technician working at a Baghdad hotel. Spurling "had been taken away from his wife and daughters at Saddam International Airport and tortured for four months with electric shock, brass knuckles, and wooden bludgeons. His toes were crushed and his toenails ripped out. He was kept in solitary confinement on a starvation diet. Finally, American diplomats won his release. Multiply his story by thousands, and you will have an idea what Iraq is like to this day." Spurling was one of Saddam's luckier victims: He survived. Many thousands of others have been executed outright or tortured to death -- or forced to witness the torture or murder of their loved ones.

Water Cure

Water cure is a form of water torture in which the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water in a short time, resulting in gastric distension, water intoxication, and possibly death. Often the victim has the mouth forced or wedged open, the nose closed with pincers and a funnel or strip of cloth forced down the throat. The victim has to drink all the water (or other liquids such as bile or urine) poured into the funnel to avoid drowning. The stomach fills until near bursting, and is sometimes beaten until the victim vomits and the torture begins again.

Sixty-five Year Old Man is Hit with a Small Stool and a Water Bottle is hung from his Genitals

On June 3, 2001, Mr. Wang Enchang who at the time was 65 years old was brought to the Men's Group where Falun Gong practitioners are illegally detained. Group leader Wang Qi brutally tortured Wang Enchang in order to try to force him to give up the practice of Falun Gong. While beating Wang Enchang with both electric and rubber batons, Wang Qi said: "This is the law of our country." Then Wang Qi ordered two people to hit Wang Enchang's lower legs and knees with folding metal chairs and said: "I represent the government." Wang Enchang fell to the ground due to unbearable pain. Then Wang Qi ordered them to hit his shoulders and back with wooden rods and rubber batons. Wang Enchang felt his heart was exploding. Then the vicious men stepped heavily on Wang Enchang's genitals for over 10 minutes, giving him injuries that have still not healed. He is in so much pain that he wakes up more than ten times a night, and he is forced to kneel on the bed to relieve the unbearable pain in his groin and back . What's even more savage is that Wang Qi tied a water bottle to Wang Enchang's genitals to torture him. The only reason for the torture is to try to force him to give up Falun Gong and for Wang Qi to keep his "Advanced Group" title.

Beating with a weapon

Interrogators used weapons in 26 out of 41 cases. The weapons used are mostly rifle butts, police batons and clubs. Other weapons include: an iron pipe, and a police baton with nails. From the testimony of Mohammed Dagher: "Then, the interrogator severely beat me with an iron pipe on my elbows and knees. He asked me to stand up and to raise my hands. He beat me again on the elbows and knees and threatened that I should confess if I ever want to go back home again." From the testimony of Ibrahim Rashmawi: "When I asked if they were beating me because I had damaged the house of a collaborator with Israel, they beat me harder and beat me all over my body with sticks and the butts of the rifles."

Saudi Arabia: New Video Confirms Torture in Prison

Beatings and other forms of ill-treatment in Saudi prisons are far more common than the single incident captured in the video. In November, several prisoners at al-Ha’ir prison told Human Rights Watch that guards regularly beat them as punishment for perceived transgressions. One prisoner told Human Rights Watch: “I got into a fight. The guards came and beat us all. They made us lie down and beat us; they broke sticks on our backs.” Guards often beat prisoners collectively, regardless of who was responsible for the perceived transgression, prisoners said. “Last month, a prisoner had an argument with a guard,” another prisoner told Human Rights Watch. “The guard brought everyone from the wing outside and beat them.” Several other prisoners said guards had suspended them above the ground for prolonged periods. “If a prisoner complains about anything he is beaten,” said a third prisoner. “They also hang us by handcuffs with our feet suspended, or take our blankets.”

Horrifying tales of torture, execution in North Korea

She said she had witnessed numerous other atrocities, including the murder of newborn babies by guards and doctors. "While I was there, three women delivered babies on the cement floor without blankets," Ms Soon told a Senate judiciary subcommittee chaired by Democrat Edward Kennedy. "It was horrible to watch the prison doctor kicking the pregnant women with his boots. When a baby was born, the doctor shouted, 'Kill it quickly. How can a criminal expect to have a baby? Kill it.' "The women covered their faces with their hands and wept. Even though the deliveries were forced by injection, the babies were still alive when born. The prisoner-nurses, with trembling hands, squeezed the babies' necks to kill them."

N. Korean reveals childhood torture

When Mr. Shin was 13, his mother and brother attempted an escape, unsuccessfully. That day, a civilian car met Mr. Shin outside the camp school. He was driven to a secret, underground location. There, guards demanded details of the plot. Mr. Shin was ignorant of it. He was suspended over a fire. When he screamed, a hook was hacked into his groin. Unconscious, he was slung into a cell with a skeletal old man. The man cared for the child's festering injuries and gave him his own meager rations. It was the first time Mr. Shin had ever received affection from another human. "I will never forget him," Mr. Shin wrote. "I came to love him more than my parents." After seven months, Mr. Shin was released to witness his mother's hanging and his brother's execution by shooting. Mr. Shin noticed his father in tears, but he had only one emotion: "I was furious with them; as a result of their crimes, I was subject to torture." Life continued. His niece was raped and killed by guards. He dropped a sewing machine; guards chopped off a fingertip with a knife. Constantly hungry, he once found three corn kernels in a pile of cow manure, his "lucky day." Unaware of any world beyond the wire, his dreams were to excel at work, gain permission to marry or become a team leader.

Torture In Iran

Psychological torture is one thing, physical torture another. And Batebi says there was plenty of that too. "They kicked me in the teeth and broke them. There was a toilet that was stopped up with feces. They put my head into the toilet," he said. Batebi told Cooper the bottom of his feet and his back were beaten with a cable, and that his testicles were beaten as well. Asked how long this went on for, Batebi said, "This ha ppened the whole time I was in solitary confinement. It also happened at other times."

"They also used sleep deprivation against you, kept you up day and night. And they hung you from the ceiling with your hands tied behind your back," Cooper remarked. "At least five or six times they did this," Batebi replied. Batebi told 60 Minutes he never knew which days he'd be tortured or which technique they would use. Once he says, they cut him, and rubbed salt in his wounds. "I hadn't slept for maybe 72 hours. I couldn't think clearly. I was drooling. I wanted to sleep but they would slap me to keep me awake. In the final hours when even the slapping wouldn't keep me up, they cut my arms and hands and put salt in my wounds so the burning would keep me awake."

Meanwhile, in the United States, we're complaining about this:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently went out of her way to refute the charge that she knew about the waterboarding procedure long before it was used as a weapon against the Bush Administration.

"In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ... opinions that they could be used."

It turns out that the Washington Post confirmed that Pelosi was not only present to view the enhanced interrogation techniques, but that bipartisan congressional observers encouraged its use.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

As the old saying goes, "A lie told often enough will become the truth."

Fast forward to the present.

The CIA has confirmed that by waterboarding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammad, he revealed valuable intelligence that aborted a 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.

Here is the difference in terms of our reaction:

CNSNews.com: CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

Huffington Post: CIA Waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 Times In One Month

So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM. The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn't sound very effective to me.

The difference in effectiveness, of course, is Los Angeles. Had we abolished the use of waterboarding, the City of Angels would have suffered terribly from another terrorist attack.

The media's reaction to KSM's life-saving interrogations:

What if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Had Died? AlterNet - ‎21 hours ago‎ Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. We practiced sleep deprivation on him for 11 straight days. I don't know how many times we smashed his ... Waterboarding 2 members of al Qaeda 266 times constitute a crime? CNN Political Ticker Planner of 9/11 attacks waterboarded 183 times-NYT Reuters

Not even a word about Los Angeles made the headlines.

Even if you are amongst the three enemy combatants, I can guarantee that you were never:

• Having your eyes gouged out.
• Having your genitals blackened.
• Being tortured for months with electric shock, brass knuckles, and wooden bludgeons.
• Having your toes crushed and your toenails ripped out.
• Being kept in solitary confinement on a starvation diet.
• Being forced to witness the torture or murder of your loved ones.
• Drinking large quantities of water mixed with urine or bile in a short time with your nose closed.
• Taking a beating on your shoulders and back with both electric and rubber batons and wooden rods.
• Having your genitals stepped on.
• Having a water bottle tied to your genitals.
• Being beaten with an iron pipe, clubs, rifle butts, and a police baton with nails.
• Being beaten on your back until a guard's stick breaks.
• Being hung by handcuffs with your feet suspended.
• Having a "prison doctor" squeeze the neck of your newborn baby, killing it.
• Being suspended over a fire.
• Having a hook in your groin.
• Witnessing your mother's hanging.
• Having your fingertips chopped off with a knife.
• Being kicked in the teeth to the point where they break.
• Having your head dunked in a toilet full of feces.
• Having your testicles beaten with a cable.
• Being deprived of sleep for 72 hours, slapped, and cut, with salt in your wounds to keep you awake.

And yet, opportunistic politicians are willing to put their own country in the same category as the ruthless dictatorships that practice these barbaric means of torture.