By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Added: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:00:00 UTC

I received several Google Alerts today on this topic and after following a few links, this article came up. It's from last August but really needs to be seen by anyone who hasn't before and it is well worth reading and seeing the video again if you have. With all of the recent torture news in the US this is even more pertinent now than when it was published last year. There is a link to the YouTube video below which is the same as the video in the article, it's just cleaner to embed. It's well worth the time to click through and read the article and watch the video. Note the safeguards in place and how long he lasted knowing that he could stop instantly. Imagine if you had no way to know how long it would last and there was no way to stop and an agonizing death was the probably outcome. However, thinking was not possible. There was only the certainty and panic that you were about to die.
/Mike
Reposted from
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

It goes without saying that I knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:

“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body.

TAGGED: ABUSE, COMMENTARY, HUMAN RIGHTS