what exactly is waterboarding?

[elder999]

Well, here's what a former Master Chief Instructor at the U.S. Navy SERE school had to say about 'waterboarding":

....both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique....

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...and here's what Brig. General David Irviine has to say about torture:

No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence. While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives. Exhibit A is the torture-extracted confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda captive who told the CIA in 2001, having been "rendered" to the tender mercies of Egypt, that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda to use WMD. It appears that this confession was the only information upon which, in late 2002, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state repeatedly claimed that "credible evidence" supported that claim, even though a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 questioned the reliability of the confession because it was likely obtained under torture. In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his "confession," and a month later, the CIA recalled all intelligence reports based on his statements.

and here's what former FBI agent says about torture, specifically, waterboarding:

a former FBI agent said some of the most aggressive interrogation techniques in dispute are rarely effective anyway.


"Generally speaking, those don't work," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent and an ABC News consultant.


"I think water boarding is one we've all heard about, and I think the public understands what the term means," Cloonan told Bill Weir on ABC News' "Good Morning America Weekend." "We sort of fake drown somebody."

and, lastly, from the CIA webpage, a paper from the Intelligence Science board on educing intellignence:

As I read the volume, my thoughts drifted back to James J. Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence from 1954 to 1974. In 1975, Senator Frank Church of Idaho led a Senate investigation into alleged intelligence abuses. I was his special assistant on the committee, and one of my assignments was to spend time with Angleton, probing his views on counterintelligence. At Angleton's suggestion, he and I met weekly for a few months at the Army-Navy Club in Washington DC. One of the key principles of counterintelligence interrogation, he emphasized to me, was this: if you torture a subject, he will tell you whatever you want to hear. The infliction of pain was a useless approach-- "counterproductive," as some of the authors in this anthology would put it. Angleton also had little regard for the polygraph or for chemicals as instruments of truth-seeking. He was not above using some forms of discomfort, though, such as Spartan quarters for the subject, along with sleep deprivation, time disorientation, and exhaustive questioning by way of a "good cop, bad cop" routine. Like some of the authors in this volume, he believed in using a combination of rapport-building (the good cop) and the engendering of some fear (the bad cop--although not one armed with a pair of pliers).

If Angleton had been able to read this book, he would have discovered a considerable corpus of research that suggests that the induction of sleep deprivation, fatigue, isolation, or discomfort in a subject merely raises the likelihood of inaccurate responses during subsequent questioning. As for the polygraph, researchers in this study tell us that this approach has definite shortcomings, but "there is currently no viable technical alternative to polygraphy."

 

[Sukerkin]

I agree, Archangel, we are without a doubt speaking with our hearts here and without the benefit of professional input.

The closest I can get to that is that I know (in the Internet sense) a couple of FBI chaps but they're not 'front-end' so what they would be able to confirm is questionable. Tez might be able to shed a little light with her connections?

To me, torture is morally wrong. I have no ambiguity about that at all.

The simplest part of my stance on this is simple extrapolation of legality - if it is illegal for me to do something then that illegality should also 'scale up' to render it illegal for my government to do it.

This, of course, falls foul of the point I made before about how an individual can have inconsistent views. How can I hold on the one hand that a government should not be allowed to use torture and yet, on the other, give my assent for them to invoke the death penalty?

Illogicality apart ( ), I still staunchly withhold my consent for my government to use torture to further it's aims. That holds true for me even if by use of torture information can be gained that will save many lives. Tho' it is not the fault of those that would be saved and to save them would be most assuredly a 'good thing', to do so via use of torture is to buy their lives with corrupt coin.

Permit something evil to be used for a clearly good purpose on one occasion and it's use will become more acceptable to those who wish to use it. Next time the use will not be for such a laudible cause. The time after that, even less so.

To get a little Yoda/Buddha on your behinds, it only takes a little fruit juice added to a glass of pure water to turn the whole into something else. It is the same with moral choices.

 

[Archangel M]

For that matter I have some "connections" to the business, but VERY FEW (and for good reason) have access to classified information. Perhaps it doesn't work, I dont know and for that matter 99% of us here probably have no real clue either. And if you did odds are you wouldnt be talking about here.

From my perspective, I believe that "coercive techniques" CAN work. I dont believe that most of our intell guys think that this is a technique where you just get a guy to "spill" and then believe that data without some sort of verification with other intell. I would think that intell specialists would be well aware of subjects giving false information to end interrogation.

But the issue of it "working" or not is a vastly different issue from if its right to do it or not. You can believe it works but still believe its wrong.

 

[elder999]

William Safire traces the specific terminology back to 1976:

In 1976, a United Press International reporter wrote that U.S. Navy trainees “were strapped down and water poured into their mouths and noses until they lost consciousness. . . . 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.’ ”

Additionally, from the article I posted earlier, Mal Nance, the former Master Chief Navy SERE instructor, and counterterroism intelligence and interrogation consultant to DHS, CIA, FBI and US armed forces special operations, has this to say about wateboarding:

Waterboarding is not a simulation. 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.
Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that.

Remember, this is the guy who has probably taught the technique to some of the people who wound up using it.

 

[Empty Hands]

I agree, Archangel, we are without a doubt speaking with our hearts here and without the benefit of professional input.

Not true. Both Elder and myself have posted the writings of professionals involved in the use of waterboarding, either for training or for interrogation.

 

[Sukerkin]

That was a conditional clause as an introduction, to let the reader know that I have no professional knowledge or expertise on the subject. It was also to acknowledge my agreement with the previous posters statement that, as far as we know, we have noone here with actual experience.

 

[Twin Fist]

And former head of the CIA James Woolsey said it does work. I believe him.

KSM himself admitted it worked on him. I believe him too.

"A current CIA official says that KSM actually told interrogators the only reason he confessed was because of the water-boarding."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/how-the-cia-bro.html

yes, it is horrible. Horrible things happen in war every day. Wishing otherwise doesnt make it so.

And lets not forget that it is a good thing to be loved and respected by your friends, but it is also a good thing to be feared by your enemies.

 

[Archangel M]

We can trade "professionals" opinions all day, and whos is more relevant than whos EH. As Twin Fist has shown they have as varied opinions as we do.

 

[elder999]

And former head of the CIA James Woolsey said it does work. I believe him.

KSM himself admitted it worked on him. I believe him too.

"A current CIA official says that KSM actually told interrogators the only reason he confessed was because of the water-boarding."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/how-the-cia-bro.html

From the above quoted article:

“If one water-board session got him to talk, you could have gotten him to talk (without it), given time and patience," said Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant and former FBI agent. Garrett has 30 years of experience interrogating terrorists such as Yousef, the Pakistani man who killed two CIA employees at the gates to the agency's Langley, Va. headquarters in 1994 and hundreds of violent criminals.

"If in fact it's true that they water-boarded him once and then he started talking and provided reliable information, then he falls under the category of the small minority of people on whom it works. But torture seldom works. Most people start talking...to get the pain to stop," Garrett said.

But in many cases, theb[] harsh intelligence techniques led to questionable confessions and downright lies,[/b] say officers with firsthand knowledge of the program. That included statements that al Qaeda was building dirty bombs.
"It is true that the person who was saying the nuke stuff said it under pressure. The analysts believed it was not true; it did not conform to other information," one former intelligence officer told ABC News.

 

[elder999]

wrong again Elder

KSM cracked after less than 3 minutes, and we got a TON of information

it works very well.

After less than 3 minutes?

Or after the 50th or 100th time???

Seen here:

updated 9:09 a.m. MT, Mon., April 20, 2009
C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.
The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

 

[Empty Hands]

So that's about 6 times a day on average. I'm amazed they had time to do anything else. What insanity.