The Daily Background

White House legal counsel Ed Gillespie is now claiming:

…first of all, this technique [waterboarding], we don’t know that it’s used by the government or is used by the government. That’s never been confirmed by the U.S. government.

Is that true? Of course not. In addition to the numerous CIA sources that have leaked information about waterboarding to the press because they were concerned laws were being broken, there has been real, official confirmation of waterboarding by the US government.

In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, the Department of Defense decided it had to try and calm fears that the US was illegally torturing people, and that the torture at Abu Ghraib had been officially sanctioned (in fact, much of it had). To do this, they decided to release several memos which they hoped would clear all doubts about illegal torture. The memos were signed by Secretary Rumsfeld and several other high level administration officials.

Among the techniques it revealed that US forces were authorized to use? You guessed it, waterboarding.

(Download the full memo here.)

The description of waterboarding they offer is quite sterilized but still unmistakable. Here is a real-life description of how the torture techique actually works:

STEP 1: The victim’s hands and feet are tied down or shackled to a board and their head is held in place so they are not able to move

STEP 2: The end of the board with the victim’s feet tied to it is elevated so that their head is at the floor and their feet are several feet above them

STEP 3: A piece of wet plastic or fabric is used to constrain the air flow to the victim’s nose and mouth

STEP 4: Cold water is poured all over the victim’s body, head and face, creating a simulation of drowning which can sometimes result in permanent brain and lung damage or even death

STEP 5: The victim is made to believe that they are drowning (i.e. a form of simulated execution, explicitly banned under UNCAT), and that their interrogators will not stop until they admit guilt of their supposed crimes

Aditionally, former CIA Director Porter Goss has defended his agency’s admitted use of waterboarding in Congressional hearings:

Waterboarding is intended to cause a victim to believe he is about to die, and is similar to a mock execution. Earlier this year, in March 2005, Goss justified waterboarding as a “professional interrogation technique” during a Senate hearing. Other Bush administration officials, when questioned about waterboarding, have refused to rule it out.

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