The Daily Background

Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Mike Mukasey was asked today whether waterboarding is torture. He refused to label it torture. Here’s the exchange:

MUKASEY: If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional. […]

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: If it’s torture. That’s a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn’t. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding…is constitutional?

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I’m very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.

MUKASEY: I’m sorry.

So, what exactly is waterboarding? And is it torture? Let’s go back to a description I wrote almost a year ago after doing extensive reserach on the subject for a human rights class:

Waterboarding is a torture technique which originally was invented by the people responsible for killing heretics (non Christians) during the Spanish Inquisition. Often times waterboarding is referred to as or explained as simulated drowning. However, waterboarding can, and has resulted not only in injury and permanent physical damage, but also death.

The person who is being tortured is laid down on a bench which is tilted downwards towards the floor. Their ankles are strapped to the upper end of the bench, and their hands are cuffed or restrained above their head which is at the bottom end of the bench. The face of the victim is then covered with fabric, and held tight across their face by one of the torturers.

Buckets of water or in some cases watering cans are then poured on the victim’s face (which is below the rest of their body), and typically they will be unable to breath and feel that they are drowning. Suffocation can occur in some cases, and permanent damage to the lungs and brain can also occur due to a lack of oxygen getting into the victim’s body.

Sometimes water is then simultaneously poured on the rest of the victim’s body or upper body in order to enhance the sensation that they are drowning. Media reports indicate that even the most hardened CIA officers can only take this form of torture for a small amount of time (a number of seconds) before they break down while in training.

The process makes the victim feel that they are drowning and indeed, oxygen is being cut off from their body. It is extremely painful and as mentioned earlier, can result in permanent bodily damage or death. This method, which has been used by the Spanish Inquisition and Khmer Rouge among others is expressly forbidden in international human rights law including the Geneva Convention, and the UN Convention Against Torture (both are legally binding treaties to which the United States is a party to).

The Bush Administration has argued that it is a “very important tool” for saving American lives, and former CIA director Porter Goss has described it as an acceptable interrogation technique. More recently, Vice President Dick Cheney apparently endorsed the method of torture, calling it a “no-brainer” technique.

Waterboarding has been used against so-called enemy combatants as part of the “War on Terror” (how they can wage war on a technique rather than an actual enemy baffles me). The Military Commissions act of 2006 (the “detainee bill”) allowed the US government to use evidence including tortured and forced confessions obtained by waterboarding and other types of torture.

Also relevant: the US once convicted a Japanese officer who waterboarded people during World War II on war crimes charges and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog