Well, my diary yesterday was more successful than I expected, even at the top of the wreck list for awhile.
I do wish to address one point that came up in the comments and that I did not intend to make but probably due to poor communication skills, came across anyway.
In no way do I claim that I underwent torture in SERE, that is ridiculous to claim. My point was to preempt any connection of that made in the comments. Exposed and trained on torture methods is very different than being tortured. That said, it is what enabled me to recognize things in the 2005 Abu Graib photos.
First, I am struggling to embrace amnesty to OGA and military interrogators as seems to be the Presidents current policy. One the one hand I understand it, it would absolutely devastate our national security apparatus with the personnel we would lose. And there is also the tricky question whether they acted in good faith within the twisted legal parameters provided. That's harder for me. And again, as I stated yesterday, I am going to rely on MCPO Malcom Nance, a Navy SEAL and former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California. I will rely on him so much that I will be pushing the fair use law envelop as much as I can because I feel this needs to get out. MCPO Nance personally states in his 2007 article Waterboarding is Torture...Period:
With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.
First off, let's begin with the OLC legal opinion. Let us be objective and accept, for the case or argument, that this is a legal definition of torture; my bolding for the following commentary.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that torture as defined in and proscribed by Sections 2340-2340A, covers only extreme acts. Severe pain is generally of the kind difficult for the victim to endure. Where the pain is physical, it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm, such as seen in mental disorders like posttraumatic stress disorder. Additionally, such severe mental pain can arise only from the predicate acts listed in Section 2340. Because the acts inflicting torture are extreme, there is significant range of acts that though they might constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment fail to rise to the level of torture.
Ok, for the sake of argument I'll go along with that. But let us see what a professional waterboarder (and waterboardee) has to say.
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. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown 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 which 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 black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.
Ok, here is a professional. He's not a Hollywood Jack Bauer, in fact he says
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.
He is telling us what exactly, through his knowledge and training, what waterboarding is. What this means is that not just the MCPO, but all the professionals in the CIA and military chain of command know what torture is: they study it as something that might happen to our own folks, they also have extensive training in domestic and international law when it comes to their profession.
Let's go back to the dubious OLC definition and compare it to an experts description. I am sure that lawyers could argue this (Brooklynbadboy, I'm looking at you, you and Inland are the John Adams of this site), as well as they should - John Adams successfully defended those British in the Boston Masscre and we gave defense attorneys to those accused at Nürnberg when we really could have just shot them without objection.
...it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure. - "...it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia" Um, would that count as organ failure?
Severe mental pain requires suffering not just at the moment of infliction but it also requires lasting psychological harm, such as seen in mental disorders like posttraumatic stress disorder. - "...When done right it is controlled death."
That's right, controlled death so that the victim experiences what it is to die only to be brought back. But physiologically and psychologically in their own minds, they are dying and excruciatingly experiencing it. Last I heard in therapy and the DSM IV, threat or fear of death is a stressor for PTSD.
I think, but not a lawyer, that holes are blown even in the legal justification from OLC. Moreover, I had more of the chance to be a SERE instructor than an attorney, though I was and am neither. But if I was an instructor, this justification would be totally nonsense with the expertise of my profession.
Therefore, because I can not believe that rank and file CIA officers are that stupid, I can not support giving them a free pass even within the OLC memos.
I understand why the president has to do it and it may well be for the best, I just myself morally can not support the best for the country.
One last thing before I close out my personal opinion. Former Vice-President and others are claiming this made out country less safe. The MCPO has something to say about this as well:
Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.
Yes, we can't hold them forever. It is not to say that all will go and join Al Quaeda, but we have made enemies of these people and they would be a source for terrorists to study how they resisted our confinement. No releasing of documents will make us less safe, but releasing prisoners that we torture, which we have to do morally, ethically, and legally, will make us less safe. By employing torture we have created our own demons who may come back to haunt us in the future, not because they were originally inclined to, but because we ourselves pushed them to.