Waterboarding is Torture... Period
Malcolm Nance at Small Wars Journal - a "former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California", who subjected his trainees to waterboarding as a way to prepare them for torture, testifies that waterboarding is indeed torture of the foulest sort. It forces the tortured person to inhale water, think about imminent death, and then, unless something goes wrong, recover to go through it again and again. Civilized human beings do not use it. Ever. Lots of links at the end of the article. The New York Daily News printed a shorter version.
We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like "24", are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.
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A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?
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