The public has heard about the waterboarding technique for the past couple of years but it's only been the last few months in which the true nature of the practice has been revealed - it's controlled drowning. It's forcing water into the victim's airways and lungs. To Dick Cheney, it's a "no brainer."
America waterboards and a lot more often than it's willing to admit. The Cheney/Bush administration has become so secretive, deceitful and duplicitous that there's no reason to believe waterboarding has been ruled out as an interrogation technique. These Chickenhawks seem to revel in this sort of sadistic perversion.
Yesterday members of Congress got a firsthand explanation of waterboarding by a guy who has experienced it, Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school.
"In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat," Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. "It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."
Here's one way to end the problem. Simply legislate that anyone who conducts this torture or who orders it or condones it first go through it themselves. Better yet, they could start at the top - with the guys behind it all - Cheney and Rusmfeld.
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