CIA torture program

It was interesting to go back through the old posts on this blog about the CIA torture program in light of the new film, The Report, which can be seen on Amazon Prime.

One of the early posts on this blog resulted in a debate in the comments about the ethics and efficacy of torture, which the 2014 Senate torture report (PDF link) and the film resolve decisively against torture.  The CIA torture program was ineffective and unethical.

Jeremy Scahill's interview with Daniel Jones about the CIA program and the Senate investigations and report is quite illuminating, and highly recommended listening, as is the podcast associated with the film.

A couple other items of interest:

Jason Leopold's exposure of an accidentally leaked draft letter from John Brennan to Dianne Feinstein apologizing for hacking the Senate investigation.

Senator Mark Udall's questioning of CIA general counsel Caroline Krass during her Senate confirmation hearing.

New York Times book review of Frank Rizzo's memoir, Company Man, which confirms that George W. Bush was not briefed on the torture program but was a "stand-up guy" by lying and claiming that he was.

NPR ombudsman on torture

About a week and a half ago, I heard NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepherd, defending NPR's policy on refusing to identify waterboarding as torture. Her argument was that NPR had a journalistic responsibility not to take sides on any issue, and that to identify waterboarding as torture was to take a side. She actually wrote that "I believe that it is not the role of journalists to take sides or to characterize things."

I think this is not only ridiculous, but an abdication of journalistic responsibility in favor of a bogus view of reporting "objectivity" by using only "he said, she said" descriptions, to an extreme.

Here's what I posted to the NPR blog on July 2:

There is no reasonable debate about whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding has been legally determined to be criminal torture by U.S. courts in 1947, when Yukio Asano was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor for it (among other war crimes). Other Japanese war criminals, such as Kenji Dohihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, and Hideki Tojo, were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for engaging in torture during WWII, including waterboarding, and several were executed for it.

U.S. soldiers who undergo waterboarding as part of SERE training receive that training in order to understand what torture is.

It is bad journalism to defend "there are two sides to every issue" as a form of phony objectivity. Sometimes there are more than two sides of merit, and sometimes there is only one (and there is *always* some nut who will take issue with any well-established claim). In this case, there is no reasonable argument by which waterboarding is not torture. It makes no more sense to call it "what some people refer to as torture" than it does to insert similar qualifications on the front of every noun used in a sentence on NPR.

Another commenter replied to point out that waterboarding has been legally torture for longer than that in the U.S.

I was glad to hear Adam Savage of Mythbusters, at TAM7, answer the question "what has been the biggest media failure of skepticism lately" by saying that the biggest failure has been the NPR ombudsman's statement that calling waterboarding torture is taking sides and they have to be "balanced."

George W. Bush on the difference between democracy and dictatorship

"It's important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there's an allegation of abuse ... there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. ... It's very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. ... In other words, people want to know the truth. That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn't be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation."

And on the treatment of war crimes: "War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders."

The former quote is from the video below, the latter quote is from this March 2003 CNN transcript.

(First quote via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, second quote via The Agitator.)

And, for your edification, please read Scott Horton's article, "Busting the Torture Myths."

Obama administration backs state secrets defense of extraordinary rendition and torture

So much for change.

ABC News:

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured.

New York Times:

During the campaign, Mr. Obama harshly criticized the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees, and he has broken with that administration on questions like whether to keep open the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But a government lawyer, Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.

The Telegraph:

Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.

Two High Court judges last week said they wanted to release the full contents of a CIA file on his treatment but they held back seven paragraphs of information after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, argued that it could compromise intelligence sharing with the US.

A British official, who is regularly briefed on intelligence operations, said: "The concern was that the document revealed that intelligence from the British agencies was used by the Americans and that there were British questions asked while Binyam Mohamed was being tortured.

"Miliband is being pushed hard by the intelligence agencies to protect the identity of those involved."

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy).

Glenn Greenwald writes of this that "Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability--resoundingly and disgracefully."

Obama odds and ends

Obama's inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn't like these two sentences:

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions." The words "and communism" were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history." That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation.

Rick Warren's invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying "God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!"

On Obama's first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush's executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures.

The Obameter is tracking Obama's campaign promises. So far he's kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises...

UPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He's broken that promise repeatedly already.

Cocaine plane was used by CIA

The Gulfstream II jet that crashed in Mexico last year with 3.7 tons of cocaine on board was frequently used by the CIA to fly terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay, and may have also been used for "extraordinary rendition" flights to CIA prisons overseas, as well as for Bush fundraisers. Donna Blue Aircraft, the company the plane was registered to, took down its website yesterday.

(Via The Agitator.)

ApostAZ podcast #7

The latest ApostAZ podcast is out:

Episode 007 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Monthly Meetup Epilogue. Debate Tactics and Rhetoric. Sweden Rules Against Prayer as Truth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/. Prayer and Aggression. Obama and Faith Based Initiatives. Pickett Church? http://www.atheistrev.com/ Aggression study: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract. Greydon Square's Album 'The Compton Effect'

Funny analogy from Shannon: "Prayer is a homeless dude on your couch."

Charity Navigator is another site similar to CharityWatch.

Shannon incorrectly states that McCain is a creationist. He's not. And the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, not Tennessee.

Picketing churches on the basis of its beliefs and doctrines is a terrible idea that should be left to Fred Phelps and similar kooks. The picketing of the Church of Scientology has generally been based on its behavior, not its doctrines--to the extent the focus is on opposing criminal behavior, that's reasonable.

Guantanamo interrogation class based on Chinese Communist torture techniques

When in 2002 military trainers came to Guantanamo Bay to teach a course on interrogation techniques, they included a chart of the effects of prospective techniques. That chart came from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War on U.S. soldiers to extract false confessions. The study, by Albert D. Biderman, was titled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War."

UPDATE (July 8, 2008): Ed Brayton comments on how McCain's torture using these very techniques led to a false confession--so why do we believe that torture will lead to true confessions?

Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded

Christopher Hitchens decided to experience waterboarding first-hand at the hands of experts, and he did so twice. He vividly describes the experience in Vanity Fair, which also has video.

More on CIA extraordinary rendition flights

I just figured out that Trevor Paglen, the co-author of Torture Taxi, a book about how planespotting was used to track information about the CIA's extraordinary rendition flights, is also the author of I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World, for which he appeared on the Colbert Report. At his blog, I've learned that the pilots of the CIA rendition flights associated with Khalid El-Masri have been identified at Sourcewatch, where you can also find extensive information about the planes and the fictional owners of the companies that operate them (in particular see the companies Premier Executive Transport Services and Bayard Foreign Marketing, which have both owned the same Gulfstream V (PDF), nicknamed the "Guantanamo Bay Express").

El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to a CIA black site called the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan, where he was tortured, then later released in Albania after a second order to do so by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (the first was ignored). He was taken because his name resembled that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri.

El-Masri's lawsuit against the CIA and three private companies that operated planes involved with his transport was dismissed in 2006 on grounds of state secrets privilege, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 2007. He has also sued in Germany, where there are outstanding warrants for pilots Eric Robert Hume, James Kovalesky, and Harry Kirk Ellarbee. All three of these pilots work or worked for alleged CIA front company Aero Contractors Ltd., live in Johnston County, North Carolina and have been visited by the German press in unsuccessful attempts to interview them.

The German warrants were passed to Interpol, but the German government declined to ask the U.S. for extradition after an informal request was given a negative reply.

El-Masri was sent to a mental institution in 2007 after being arrested for arson and an assault on a truck-driving instructor.

CIA operatives on trial in Italy

26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, are currently on trial in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping and "extraordinary rendition" of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. On Thursday, Italy's top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, explained in court how they identified the CIA operatives responsible for Omar's kidnapping:

Megale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls.

Then, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In his testimony, Megale revealed that one telephone number he recognized was that of Robert Seldon Lady, then-CIA station chief in Milan. Lady and Megale had worked together in counter-terrorism investigations. It was a number, Megale said somberly, that he and his team knew.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

The torture team

An article by Philippe Sands in Vanity Fair sets out the evidence that the legal framework set out to justify aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay also caused the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that those responsible are guilty of war crimes. Ironically, the actions the Bush has taken to guarantee immunity from prosecution for these actions makes the case stronger for international war crimes prosecution, meaning that if any of these responsible individuals sets foot outside of the U.S., they could be at risk of seeing justice done.

(Via The Daily Doubter.)

Bush: 4th Amendment doesn't apply to domestic military operations

A 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States" stated that the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism. The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

On Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo.

The March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. That memo asserts that the President has the right to authorize torture in violation of criminal law:

If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. ... In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.

The fact that Bush wasn't impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list--I've not been reading TPM lately.)

Former U.S. military officials against "enhanced interrogation"

December 12, 2007

The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman
The United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman
The United States House of Representatives
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller:

As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).

We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat.

The current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual.

The Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate.

General David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual:

What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect.... Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong.

Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone "talk;" however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Employing interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism.

This is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions.

Sincerely,

General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.)
General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.)
General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.)
General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.)
General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.)
Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.)
Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.)
Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.)
Major General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.)
Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.)
Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.)
Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.)
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.)
Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.)
Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.)
Major General Antonio 'Tony' M. Taguba, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.)
Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Richard O'Meara, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.)
Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.)
Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.)

The bill in question has passed in the House. It still needs to pass in the Senate. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.

UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Notes on a few of the above--Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib. Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer). Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).

False confessions from torture produced Iraq WMD claims

It turns out that part of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment.

UPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding has now retracted the claim in his new book. He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding.

Guantanamo Bay operations manual leaked to Internet

The unclassified, for official use only, operations manual for U.S. soldiers stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been leaked to the Internet on the Wikileaks.org website, which is being crushed by traffic at the moment.

The manual allegedly contradicts U.S. military claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been denied access to some parts of the facility at Guantanamo.

The manual unsurprisingly prohibits soldiers from subjecting prisoners to "abuse, or any form of corporal punishment," since specific interrogation procedures are no doubt covered in separate classified documents. Still, it's a good thing to see in writing.

A Reuters story at Yahoo has more specifics, and I'm sure we'll see mirrored copies of the document appearing elsewhere to reduce the load on Wikileaks.org.

More on waterboarding as torture

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars observes that "the US has not only always considered waterboarding to be torture, but has aggressively prosecuted other nation's for war crimes for using that technique on American POWs," quoting Judge Evan Wallach:

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding....

As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."

The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

And in the comments at Ed's blog, tacitus notes the following from a contributing editor at the National Review Online, Deroy Murdock:

While the White House must beware not to inform our enemies what to expect if captured, today's clueless anti-waterboarding rhetoric merits this tactic's vigorous defense. Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud.

Unbelievable.

UPDATE (February 14, 2008): Happy Valentine's Day. The current head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury, USA Today reports, says that waterboarding is illegal and that "There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law." The military banned such practices in 2006. Waterboarding is still "in the CIA toolkit" but requires approval by the president and the attorney general in order to be used, and has allegedly not been used since 2003. Congress is considering legislation to ban the CIA from using it at all; CIA Director Michael Hayden says current law already casts doubt on whether the CIA can legally use it.

UPDATE (March 9, 2008): George W. Bush has vetoed legislation which would have explicitly banned waterboarding from the CIA repertoire.

If you think waterboarding isn't torture...

...read this description of it from Malcolm Nance, former chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego:

I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.

In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Most of the media discussions of waterboarding have completely omitted the part about the subject's lungs filling with water and made it sound like it's no more than having your head dunked under water, like bobbing for apples at Halloween.

UPDATE (November 14, 2007): Some doubts have been raised about Nance's reliability and whether waterboarding actually involves water filling the lungs (as opposed to triggering the gag reflex and some drops of water entering the lungs), though it's clear that the psychological effects are extremely strong, with the average CIA Officer able to withstand 18 seconds before begging for it to end. For the doubts on Nance and the details of waterboarding, see the comments on these posts at Positive Liberty and Captain's Quarters.

UPDATE (December 31, 2007): Here's a guy who experimented with waterboarding techniques on himself, and vividly explains the results.

CIA head investigates CIA Inspector General

CIA Director (and former head of the NSA) Gen. Michael Hayden is unhappy with CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's work uncovering abuses at the CIA, so he's ordered his own investigation of the IG, including an examination of the office's confidential files. That's sure to put a chill on employee cooperation with or reporting of abuses to the IG's office.

Secret U.S. endorsement of severe interrogations

In today's New York Times:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

The above is just the first few paragraphs of the first of five pages in the Times. The article goes on to point out multiple instances of the White House saying one thing then secretly doing another, including re-opening CIA "black sites" for "enhanced interrogation techniques." The article ends with a quote from John D. Hutson, "the Navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000":

“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?” he asked.

The White House's tap-dancing response to this Times article can be found here.