Waterboarding
Waterboarding or controlled drowning is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.
Waterboarding has been used in diverse places and at various points in history, including the Spanish and Flemish Inquisitions, by the United States military during the Philippine–American War, by Japanese and German officials during World War II, by the French in the Algerian War, by the U.S. during the Vietnam War and the war on terror, by the Pinochet regime in Chile, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, by British security forces during the Troubles, and by South African police during the Apartheid era. Historically, waterboarding has been viewed as an especially severe form of torture.
Origin of the term
While the technique has been used in various forms for centuries, the term water board was recorded first in a 1976 UPI report: "A Navy spokesman admitted use of the 'water board' torture... to 'convince each trainee that he won't be able to physically resist what an enemy would do to him.'" The verb-noun waterboarding dates from 2004. Techniques using forcible drowning to extract information had hitherto been referred to as "water torture", "water treatment", "water cure" or simply "torture". Professor Darius Rejali of Reed College, author of Torture and Democracy, speculates that the term waterboarding probably has its origin in the need for a euphemism.Technique
The practice of waterboarding has differed. During the Algerian War of Independence and Marcos' dictatorship in the Philippines, waterboarding involved forcing the victim to swallow or inhale water. Other forms of waterboarding prevent water from entering the lungs. The United States Army's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training occasionally included waterboarding, in a less severe form that only mimicked drowning. Different accounts of waterboarding by the United States disagree about how it is practiced. Some accounts describe saturated cloth and water being used to create a misperception of drowning, while others describe water entering the body.The United States' Office of Legal Counsel in August 2002 responded to the request by the CIA for a legal opinion regarding the use of certain interrogation techniques. It included the following account of the CIA's definition of waterboarding in a Top Secret 2002 memorandum as follows:
Historically in the West, the technique is known to have been used in the Spanish Inquisition. The suffocation of bound prisoners with water has been favored because, unlike most other torture techniques, it produces no marks on the body. CIA officers who have subjected themselves to the technique have lasted an average of 14 seconds before refusing to continue.
Reported demonstrations
In 2006 and 2007, Fox News and Current TV, respectively, demonstrated a waterboarding technique. In the videos, each correspondent is held against a board by the torturers.Christopher Hitchens voluntarily subjected himself to a filmed demonstration of waterboarding in 2008, an experience which he recounted in Vanity Fair. He was bound on a horizontal board with a black mask over his face. A group of men said to be highly trained in this tactic, who demanded anonymity, carried out the torture. Hitchens was strapped to the board at the chest and feet, face up, and unable to move. Metal objects were placed in each of his hands, which he could drop if feeling "unbearable stress", and he was given a code word that, if said, would immediately end the exercise. The interrogator placed a towel over Hitchens' face and poured water on it. After 16 seconds, Hitchens threw the metal objects to the floor and the torturers pulled the mask from his face, allowing him to breathe. Hitchens, who had previously expressed skepticism over waterboarding being considered a form of torture, changed his mind. Hitchens said of the matter:
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy of those who are applying the pressure.
Mental and physical effects
Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue Hospital/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. In an interview for The New Yorker, he argued that "it was indeed torture. 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience', he said". Keller also gave a full description in 2007 in testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the practice.The CIA's Office of Medical Services noted in a 2003 memo that "for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness".
In an open letter in 2007 to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Human Rights Watch asserted that waterboarding can cause the sort of "severe pain" prohibited by , that the psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends, and that uninterrupted waterboarding can ultimately cause death.
Classification as torture
Waterboarding is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts, politicians, war veterans, intelligence officials, military judges, and human rights organizations. David Miliband, then United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, described it as torture on 19 July 2008, and stated "the UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture". Arguments have been put forward in the United States that it might not be torture in all cases, or that it is unclear. The U.S. State Department has recognized "submersion of the head in water" as torture in other circumstances, for example, in its 2005 Country Report on Tunisia.The United Nations' Report of the Committee Against Torture: Thirty-fifth Session of November 2006, stated that state parties should rescind any interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
Classification in the U.S.
Whether waterboarding should be classified as a method of torture was not widely debated in the United States before it was alleged, in 2004, that members of the CIA had used the technique against certain suspected detained terrorists.Subsequently, the U.S. government released the Bybee memo, a memorandum dated 1 August 2002, from Jay Bybee at the Office of Legal Counsel for White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. The OLC memo concluded that waterboarding did not constitute torture and could be used to interrogate enemy combatants. Bybee reasoned that "in order for pain or suffering to rise to the level of torture, the statute requires that it be severe" and that waterboarding did not cause severe pain or suffering either physically or mentally. A separate memo in July 2002, written by the Defense Department's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, described the use of waterboarding and other techniques of extreme duress as "torture" and said that its use could yield unreliable information, and warned that "The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel." This memo was forwarded to the Defense Department Office of the General Counsel, and then to the CIA's acting general counsel and Justice Department, even as the George W. Bush administration authorized waterboarding and other measures.
For over three years during the George W. Bush administration, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted an investigation into the propriety of the Bybee memo and other memos by the Justice Department on waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques. The OPR report findings were that former Deputy AAG John Yoo committed intentional professional misconduct and that former AAG Jay Bybee committed professional misconduct. These findings were dismissed in a memo from Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, who found that Yoo showed "poor judgment" but did not violate ethical standards. Commentators have noted that the memos omitted key relevant precedents, including a Texas precedent under then-Governor George W. Bush when the state convicted and sentenced to prison for ten years a county sheriff for waterboarding a criminal suspect. Bush did not issue a pardon for the sheriff.
Former George W. Bush administration officials Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft have stated since leaving office that they do not consider waterboarding to be torture. At least one Republican member of the U.S. Congress, Ted Poe, has taken a similar position.
Other Republican officials have provided less definitive views regarding whether waterboarding is torture. Andrew C. McCarthy, a former Republican prosecutor including in the George W. Bush administration, has stated that when used in "some number of instances that were not prolonged or extensive", waterboarding should not qualify as torture under the law. McCarthy has also stated that "waterboarding is close enough to torture that reasonable minds can differ on whether it is torture" and that "here shouldn't be much debate that subjecting someone to repeatedly would cause the type of mental anguish required for torture".
Many former senior George W. Bush administration officials, on the other hand, have seriously questioned or directly challenged the legality of waterboarding. These include former State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, General Ricardo Sanchez, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and former Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions Susan J. Crawford.
During his tenure as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003–2004, Jack Goldsmith put a halt to the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique because of serious concern over its legality, but Goldsmith's order was quickly reversed by others within the George W. Bush administration.
A Republican 2008 candidate for president—Senator John McCain, who himself was tortured during his years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War—has stated unequivocally several times that he considers waterboarding to be torture:
Professors such as Wilson R. Huhn have also challenged the legality of waterboarding.
In May 2008, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens voluntarily underwent waterboarding and concluded that it was torture. He also noted that he suffered ongoing psychological effects from the ordeal.
On May 22, 2009, radio talk show host Erich "Mancow" Muller subjected himself to waterboarding to prove that it is not torture, but changed his mind because of the experience.
On April 22, 2009, Fox News host Sean Hannity offered to be waterboarded for charity in order to prove that it did not amount to torture, though he did not follow through with it.
In a May 11, 2009 interview with Larry King, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura stated:
On January 15, 2009, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, told his Senate confirmation hearing that waterboarding is torture and the President cannot authorize it. In a press conference on April 30, President Obama also stated, "I believe waterboarding was torture, and it was a mistake."