Waterboarding is torture

At Small Wars Journal, former SERE instructor Malcom Nance argues that waterboarding is toture, period, and can't be rationally argued otherwise.

... As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. ...

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

One problem with public understanding of what waterboarding entails is that there is apparently more than one way to inflict it. The Nazis used to waterboard by strapping the victim face down on a board, the top edge of the board ending below the chin. They'd then dunk the victim's head under the water and bring him (or her - they were equal-opportunity torturers) back up at the incipience of terror as the victims they couldn't hold their breath any longer.

As I understand how "the American model" is done, which Chief Nance is talking about, the victim is strapped face up on the board (one presumes it could just as well be a long table), then plastic qrap, like Saran wrap, is place over the victims face, cutting off breathing through both mouth and nose. Then a small hole, about the size you could make with a writing pen, is punched through the wrap in the middle of the mouth.

Understand, the victim must breathe - you can't stop your self from breathing except for a few tens of seconds. So once he starts to suck air through the little hole in the wrap, the torturers start pouring water through the hole. That's how, as Chief Nance points out, the victim's lungs start to fill with water. He literally inhales it because the torturers make sure they pour water into his mouth when he breathes in.

Anyone think that is not one of the most terrifying things a human being could experience?

Chief Nance concludes,

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Quite so. Read the whole article. (HT: Winds of Change)

Checkpoint irony

Here is a sequence of photos I took this month as I left Bethlehem in the West Bank and returned to Jerusalem.



The pic above was taken from the Palestinian side of the checkpoint. Driving from Israeli-controlled Jerusalem into the Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem area of the West Bank was unencumbered. Vehicles pretty much breezed right through. The Palestinians have no fear of Israeli suicide bombers coming to devastate their buses or restaurants. After all, there are no Israeli suicide bombers.



Security instructions, in Hebrew (top), then Arabic and finally English. All traffic signs in Israel appear in those three languages.



Palestinian graffitti on the Palestinian side of the security barrier.



More graffitti.



Just inside the Israeli side of the barrier is this mural. Sorry for the oblique angle - when we moved directly in front of it, I was too close to get the whole mural in one shot.

I found the mural ironic, since whatever they Israelis and Palestinians have, "love and peace" ain't it, on either side.

Most of the entire West Bank is enclosed by a security fence, about 700 kilometers. About six percent of the distance is a wall rather than a fence because of the density of the buildings present. The fence generally follows the "Green Line," but the Green Line is ill defined in some places. The Green Line, btw, is the ceasefire line agreed to in 1949, at the close of Irael's war for independence. It is not actually a border of any kind. It is called the Green Line because it was drawn on the negotiators' map with a green pencil. Really.

This shot of the security wall was taken near the unused Jerusalem airport. Rock throwers shut the airport down some years ago. They threw rocks over the wall above at airliners landing or just onto the runway, the horizontal, flat gray feature just below the wall. Any pilot who may be reading can imagine how eager airline pilots were to land on runways covered in rocks.

Despite the international controversy about the fence/wall, it would be very hard to find an Israeli of any political stripe who would call for its removal. The fence was erected by a government very reluctant to do so, and was opposed by both Labor and Likud. But the bombings of the Second Intifada, begun in 2000, became so severe that the people demanded the barrier go up. Since it went up, terrorist violence inside Israel has fallen by 80-95 percent, depending the on the region of the country.

The barrier has made life harder for the Palestinians, who complain that it has degraded their quality of life. The typical Israeli responds, "Our lives come before your quality of life." Hard to argue with that.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a prominent Israeli journalist, said the barrier should be named the "Yasser Arafat Memorial Wall."

Hamas, Fatah human rights abuses documented

The man I am sitting with in the photo below, taken in Jericho last Saturday, is Bassem Eid, the founder and manager of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Mr. Eid is a Muslim and a member of the largest Arab tribe in the West Bank.



Right to left: the author, Bassem Eid, Ruth Lautt.

Mr. Eid formerly helped monitor and investigate claims of human rights violations by the Israelis. After the founding of the Palestinian Authority by the Oslo agreements, Eid noticed that no one was paying attention to HR violations by the PA or Palestinian militias. So Eid founded the PHRMG in 1996.

PHRMG's latest revelations of human-rights violations by the PA and Hamas were released yesterday, entitled, "Fatah and Hamas Human Rights Violations in the Palestinian Occupied Territories from June 2007 to October 2007" (PDF online).

No one else is doing the work that Bassem Eid and his small number of assistants are doing. He was arrested by the PA in the 1990s, but was held only a day. The fact that his tribe is the largest in the West Bank - and therefore has the most muscle to retaliate against anyone who might harm him - is almost certainly the only reason he is still breathing.

I'll post a summary of our conversation with Mr. Eid soon.

Hamas' rockets test limits of Israeli patience

The news today is that Israel fired missiles into Gaza to kill Mubarak al-Hassanat, a top-ranking Hamas member directly involved with firing Hamas' homemade Kassan rockets into southern Israel.

Hamas has been firing the anti-personnel rockets into Israeli towns and countryside with regularity for years.

I went to Israel on Oct. 15 and returned just tonight. Two days ago I visited the town of Sederot (sometimes spelled Sderot) and nearby Ashkelon. Sederot is a little more than a kilometer from Gaza:



That's me standing on the southern edge of Sederot. Gaza is only a few hundred meters on the other side of the tree line behind me.

Six rockets fell on Sederot a few hours before we arrived. Here are the remains of three of them.



There is a large rack of exploded rockets outside the town's police station. They have a diagram explaining how the rockets are made.



These are purely anti-personnel rockets. They lack the explosive power to penetrate unreinforced buildings. The warhead section is loaded with pellets or small ball bearings intended to do nothing but shred flesh, propelled by only a couple of pounds of high explosive.

However, if they do hit an ordinary building (as a rocket did yesterday) they can damage it substantially:



Israel has tethered three blimps around the northern perimiter of Gaza with automated warning sensors and systems.



The town official who showed us around said it is optically based. Whern a launch is detected, every speaker in the town - and there are a lot of warning speakers - announces "red dawn" over and over. Townspeople have only 20 seconds to seek shelter. The town continues to build shelters such as this one.



Here is a video of the extent of the rack of recovered detonated rockets. This rack shows only six months worth of rockets launched. Yes, some people of Siderot have been killed, including children, as well as some Israelis in the surrounding areas.

Authors' disclaimer

The authors of the blog operate this site at their own expense, using their own resources and technology. We do not represent any organizations on this site. We are not writing on behalf of any organization unless specifically so stated in the post concerned. While we have professional positions, we are not writing on behalf of them as a whole here, nor any part of them.

John Krenson's biography

John Krenson is an ordained Permanent Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, ministering to a large Nashville congregation. A successful business owner, John is a military police lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee Army National Guard. John served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division from 2003-2004. He is the author of Crossfire – A Time for Peace, War & Love, available at www.johnkrenson.com.

Upon graduating from Marquette University in 1986 with a degree in Political Science, John was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army Reserve; he subsequently transferred into the Tennessee Army National Guard. Following a spiritual renewal at age 30, he was invited to enter into the Diaconate Formation Program of the Diocese of Nashville in 1995. After four years of intense scriptural, theological and pastoral training, John was ordained at age 35 as a Permanent Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church.

John resides in his native city of Nashville, Tenn. He and his wife, Carrie, were married in 1993. They have adopted two beautiful children, Dasha and Evan, four times traveling the children's homeland, Russia, to arrange their arrival. Not long after being ordained, John partnered with another man to purchase a chemical-manufacturing firm that grew considerably until John sold his interest in the company after he returned from Afghanistan.

Then-Major Krenson fought in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan as the Chief Intelligence Liaison Officer between US Coalition forces and NATO forces, and later as Current Operations Intelligence Officer for Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan. He now serves as the Executive Officer of the 168th Military Police Battalion of the Tennessee Army National Guard and will assume command of a Guard MP battalion in summer 2007. He is active in the U. S. Army's State Partnership Program, linking National Guard units with former Soviet Bloc militaries to develop strong relationships and military interoperability. In this capacity he has made several lengthy trips to the former East Bloc, concentrating on Bulgaria.

John awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal with OLC, the Army Achievement Medal with OLC, National Defense Service Medal with bronze service star, as well as the Humanitarian Service Medal and the Mississippi Magnolia Medal (both for service following Hurricane Katrina), with a variety of others. He has also been awarded Tennessee awards to include the Tennessee Meritorious Service Ribbon, Tennessee Individual Achievement Ribbon, and the Tennessee War Service Ribbon.

Today John makes campus appearances as speaker for the Young America’s Foundation, and consults organizations and businesses with leadership training nationwide while continuing to serve as a National Guard officer and Deacon in the Catholic Church.

Email: johnkrenson-at-comcast-dot-net

Donald Sensing's biography

I was born and raised in Nashville, Tenn. I graduated from Wake Forest University with a BA in philosophy and took a commission as a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army field artillery.

I married the former Catherine Stephens of Durham, N. C., in 1980. We have two sons, the elder a former U.S. Marine and Iraq veteran now attending Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., the younger a senior at Wake Forest University. Our daughter is in high school.

I served on four continents in the Army. I was an artillery forward observer in Korea, a battery commander, a brigade fire support coordinator, and howitzer-battalion operations officer in Germany, and operations officer for a Multiple-Launch Rocket System battalion in 18th Airborne Corps Artillery at Fort Bragg, NC. I was also qualified as a nuclear and chemical targeting analyst and was trained in counterterrorism at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N. C.

In 1986 I attended the Defense Information School, from which I graduated first in my class. I then served as chief of media relations for XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, N. C. During the invasion of Panama in December 1989 (Operation Just Cause), I served on the Corps' Battle Management Cell.

Assigned to the Pentagon in early 1990, I was the the speech writer and personal public affairs officer to the Secretary of the Army until January 1991, when I was assigned to the U. S. Army Operations Center for the Gulf War.

After the return of forces to America, I was assigned to be Director of Media Relations for the National Victory Parades in Washington, D. C. and New York City, coordinating directly with White House staff and more than 650 national and international news organizations.

Subsequently, I was a plans officer on the Army Staff until May 1993. My final Army assignment was as chief of public affairs, U. S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Just before retiring, I served as a member of the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation Task Force.

I retired in August 1995, answering my call to ordained ministry. I began classes at Vanderbilt Divinity School the same month. I was awarded a Master of Divinity in 1999 and have served full time as a United Methodist pastor since 1997. I was ordained an elder in full membership of the Tennessee Conference of the UMC in June 2002.

Since beginning blogging in March 2002, my work has been cited by The Washington Post, MSNBC, ESPN, OpinionJournal, ABC News, Commentary magazine and many other major media outlets. I authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on the subject of same-sex marriage entitled, "Save marriage? It's too late," which was subsequently reprinted in several religious journals.

In April 2005, as a result of my online essay, "The pope and communism’s fall," I was an interview guest on FoxNews Channel's, "The O'Reilly Factor," on the topic, "Does the Vatican have a Realistic Plan to Confront Evil in Today's World?."

My NormBlog profile is here.

I live in Clarksville, Tenn., with my family, where I try to go trapshooting as often as possible.

Daniel Jackson's biography

Daniel Jackson is a former sociology professor who left the academy to study for rabbinic ordination at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Jackson lives in the Galilee region of Israel and teaches several classes in Jerusalem at Touro College in Israel. He is an accomplished amateur astronomer.