Durbin, Dems to ratify use of waterboarding

### CIA interrogation transcript 5BX-1131 02-March-2008###
***EYES ONLY***

Bush held up the water jug, its spout poised over the rough-textured woven cloth that overlaid the supine Durbin's upturned face "Is waterboarding torture, Senator?"

"Yes."

"And if I, the Decider, say that it is not--then?"

"Ye--"

The word ended in a choked, gurgling gasp. Water had surged into his nostrils, shockingly cold as it filled his sinuses and pooled at the back of his throat.  He set his teeth then, and could almost count the molecules of precious oxygen as they ebbed from the meager store locked within his chest.  Strain wracked the senator’s body as the compulsion to breathe became irresistible.

Despairing, he yielded, and the icy liquid seared into his lungs, issuing again in a paroxysm of desperate coughing.  The sudden sensation of emptiness in his lungs became an instant imperative--yet the soaked rag thwarted any attempt to satiate the ravening vacuum at his core with even the smallest portion of the blessed air that surrounded him.

Bush watched him dispassionately. He drew back the jug and twitched aside a corner of the cloth that had covered his mouth. Durbin drew a ragged, wheezing half-breath of waterlogged air as sensibility grudgingly returned.

"Is waterboarding torture, Senator Durbin?"

"Yes!" he croaked with fleeting resolve.

The suffocating flood engulfed him anew, bringing darkness and a rising panic with it. "Is it torture, Senator?"...

Taking the only decision he knew could save him, he shook his head from side to side in vehement agreement.

The president chortled. "No, Senator, that is no use. You are lying. You still believe it is torture."  

"IS WATERBOARDING TORTURE?" repeated Bush's voice, which now seemed to emanate from the periphery of an unguessable void.

All at once Durbin's contorted, bluing features sagged, losing all trace of either defiance or calculated conviction.  His world had shrunk to an all-consuming question of Air versus its lack. All else now seemed to him hardly comprehensible, let alone important.

His rolling eyes and feeble shrug said plainly: "Yes! No! Yes! Anything you like. Only let me breathe, and live!"

Abruptly Durbin was sitting up with Bush's arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds.... He felt very cold, he was shivering and coughing uncontrollably. For a moment he clung to Bush like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that Bush was his protector, that the darkness and pain were something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was Bush who would save him from it.

"You are a slow learner, Senator," said Bush gently. "Like so many of your misguided constituents."

"How can I help it?" Durbin blubbered. "How can I help seeing what is so patently obvious?  Deliberately drowning people is TORTURE!"

"Sometimes, Senator. Sometimes it is merely "abhorrent". Sometimes it is necessary for the good of our democracy. Sometimes it is all of these things at once.  

You must simply Trust Us."

•  Apologies to Mr. O

  whose guess was only a couple of decades premature.

  by turbonium on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 11:37:42 AM PDT

•  This is the stuff of nightmares!

  Scary, Scary, Scary!

  Thanks for the diary!

  by DevonTexas on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 11:40:15 AM PDT

  •  I have been ...

    ... well, we didn't call it waterboarding, but the effect was the same.  It is not imaginable, nor actually describable.  The effect (as desired) is of total physical and mental panic -- a panic that can't be described even after experiencing it.  One is reduced to a primitive state of physically fighting (though that's too weak a word) for one's life.  It is not surprising that this permanently disturbs one's brain.

    My point here is just that torture -- like most extreme pain -- is simply beyond the powers of art to describe -- and that it should be understood as being beyond the powers of art to describe.  It is a wholly separate category of experience, unknown to those who have not experienced it.  (Perhaps ... and I apologize for reaching ... like childbirth, which is simply unknowable for those who have not experienced it.)

    I think it is important to always keep that in mind.  Torture is not a distant point on some continuum of experience.  It is another realm altogether.

    by Yellow Canary on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 11:52:33 AM PDT

    •  and...

      how can we claim the moral high ground when we're in the basement torturing humans.

      Imagine if they were animals. Would the outcry be more pronounced and the issue less debatable?

      by DevonTexas on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 12:23:59 PM PDT

•  Seeing Chuck Schumer in his Boxers....

  ....now THAT's Torture....

  by greenskeeper on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 12:03:42 PM PDT

•  Is it safe?

  Is it safe?

  by jimraff on Thu Feb 07, 2008 at 12:28:58 PM PDT