Story summary:
In March President Bush wrongly vetoed a law that would have banned any use of waterboarding. So while the CIA says it has not used waterboarding since 2003, it remains an option. Supporters euphemistically call it an "alternative interrogation technique" but by any reasonable definition it is a form of torture. How can restraining someone and then stimulating a gag reflex via suffocation from a water-soaked cloth be considered anything else? Nor is there evidence that waterboarding is effective at obtaining information, according to many interrogation experts. As with other torture, the desperate victims simply start saying whatever they believe the interrogators want to hear. Yet former Attorney General John Ashcroft apparently remains a fan.
In March President Bush wrongly vetoed a law that would have banned any use of waterboarding. So while the CIA says it has not used waterboarding since 2003, it remains an option.
Supporters euphemistically call it an "alternative interrogation technique" but by any reasonable definition it is a form of torture.
How can restraining someone and then stimulating a gag reflex via suffocation from a water-soaked cloth be considered anything else?
Nor is there evidence that waterboarding is effective at obtaining information, according to many interrogation experts. As with other torture, the desperate victims simply start saying whatever they believe the interrogators want to hear.
Yet former Attorney General John Ashcroft apparently remains a fan.
"The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that (waterboarding interrogations) were very valuable," Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor and senator, told a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Even if waterboarding were effective, it would still be inhumane.
Writer Christopher Hitchens explains this in the August issue of Vanity Fair, which offers his firsthand account of being waterboarded. He wrote:
"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case.
"You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning - or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure."
Hitchens continues with more specific details: "Arms already lost to me, I wasn't able to flail as I was pushed onto a sloping board and positioned with my head lower than my heart. (That's the main point: the angle can be slight or steep.) Then my legs were lashed together so that the board and I were one single and trussed unit."
He quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Hitchens concludes: "Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."
This country has long championed human rights around the world. But it is in a poor position to lead on this issue if it cannot renounce treating people, even suspected enemies, like animals.