Period.
I have about five minutes before I go teach some kids to read, write, and count, but Morton Kondracke's comments as posted on the front page just really pissed me off. Especially as I read them just after seeing this, leading to the original story.
Like the guy who actually knows what he is talking about says,
- 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.
Emphasis mine. More excerpts over the fold. And then I'm off to help train our future.
I can't believe how far our country has fallen. Since I joined AI about 30 years ago, I know all about our horrible humans rights practices, from Guatemala to Viet Nam.
But I never thought that we would actually hear someone who is being put forward as the leading law enforcement figure in the entire United States say that something like waterboarding might not be torture.
In front of Congress.
This whole episode is just effing disgusting.
[Joe] Scarborough said, "For those who don't know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked ..." He then speculated that "If you ask Americans whether they think it's okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment ... 90% of Americans will say 'yes.'"
People, what are we as a nation becoming!
Torture is torture. Period. Anything that causes extreme pain and fear, whether it leaves lasting marks or not, is torture. Period.
Whether it's waterboarding, gang rapes, or having electricity applied to your genitalia. It's all torture.
Who else says so?
As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.
What did he learn in his actual on-the-ground research, before actually becoming a SERE trainer?
On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture ... he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: "If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’" He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered "the Barrel" version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.
It reminds me of an interview I saw on a LinkTV show, with an admitted torturer from the CIA-installed Argentinian government. Paraphrased, he stated that
[waterboarding] people is like when cows drown, you know? How the last thing that happens is they try to breath through their assholes. It's all they have left...
Chilling.
I am ashamed of this country these days. We need to take it back, sooner rather than later.