Today, once again, Vice President Dick Cheney came out in favor of waterboarding to get information from suspected terrorists.

Waterboarding:

The victim is strapped to a board and either tipped back or lowered into a body of water until he or she believes that drowning is imminent. The tortured person then is removed from the water and revived. If deemed necessary, the routine is repeated.

Although there are several forms of water-based interrogation, all variants have in common that the victim almost drowns, but is rescued or re-animated by his or her captor. The technique is designed to be both a psychological and a physical torture. The psychological effect is inherent in the fact that the victim is made to understand that he or she shall be killed outright by drowning unless the demanded co-operation is promptly given. This perception reinforces the interrogator's control, giving the torture victim sound cause to experience mortal fear.

The technique characterized in 2005 by former CIA director Porter J. Goss as a "professional interrogation technique, involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation. Journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito described the CIA's waterboarding technique as follows:

"The physical effects of waterboarding can be extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation and sometimes broken bones because of the restraints applied to the struggling victim. The psychological effects can be long-lasting."

Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states: "[Dr. Keller] argued that it was indeed torture. Some victims were still traumatized years later, he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. "The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience," he said.

Historically, waterboarding and similar techniques were used by the Inquisition to elicit confessions from accused heretics. In pre-Revolution American colonies, in some strict religious communities, a variation called "dunking" was used the get women to confess that they were witches or in league with the Devil. If they refused to confess, the dunking was continued until they drowned. If they confessed, they were hanged. Similarly, if the accused heretic before the Inquisition confessed, it was assumed that his or her soul was now saved and they were mercifully hanged. If they refused to confess, they were either drowned on the spot or were revived and taken to an "auto de fé" (public execution) and burned at the stake.

A Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, was tried in 1947 for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II, and was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor. The charges against Asano included other abuses of prisoners.

On the issue of waterboarding, the United States charged Yukio Asano, a Japanese officer on May 1 to 28, 1947, with war crimes. The offenses were recounted by John Henry Burton, a civilian victim: "After taking me down into the hallway they laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water. The torture continued and continued." Yukio Asano was sentenced to fifteen years at hard labor.

We punished people with fifteen years at hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.

On September 6, 2006, the United States Department of Defense released a revised Army Field Manual entitled "Human Intelligence Collector Operations" that prohibits the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. The revised manual was adopted amid widespread criticism of U.S. handling of prisoners in the "War on Terrorism," and prohibits other practices in addition to waterboarding.

The revised manual applies to U.S. military personnel, and as such does not apply to the practices of the CIA.

In its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. Department of State formally recognizes "submersion of the head in water," as torture in its examination of Tunisia's poor human rights record.

Mr. Vice President, regarding your approval of waterboarding as an "acceptable interrogation method,

Not in My Name!

Don Firth

[Information gleaned from several web sites. --DF]