To Waterboard Or Not To Waterboard?

You will recall this article a few days ago in which a former SERE instructor for the Navy Seals stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. 

A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.

Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless.

“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.”

Ed Morrissey interviewed a former SEAL (first name Mike) and combat medic today about the practice and this SEAL, who has also gone through the SERE training, has a completely different perspective:

Mike refuses to confirm or deny any specific practices used in SERE school
either now or in the past. “If I did, it could be a breach of operational
security,” Mike told me. “Giving the intimate details of any interrogation
techniques that we simulate on our own people, or use on an enemy combatant that
has knowledge of other terrorists or plots to kill innocent people, is sedition,
in my opinion.” Mike emphasized this point several times during our
conversation. These questions should be asked in secure forums in order to set
policy. Having debates over the finer points of interrogation techniques in open
settings “only benefits those we may need to interrogate.”

However, he did take exception to one point of Nance’s
column, the one that I had found most impactful. Nance wrote:

In the media, waterboarding is called “simulated drowning,” but
that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually
filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

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.

Mike’s secondary specialty in the SEAL force is as an advanced combat medic.
Without getting into specifics on his experiences, Mike strongly disputes
Nance’s exaggerations of waterboarding. There is a word for people who have
“pint after pint of water” filling their lungs: dead. “In fact,” according to
Mike, “they would be very, very dead. By definition, anyone who has drowned is
in fact dead. A large percentage of true drownings do not involve ANY water
entering the lungs because the epiglottis closes off the air passages as water
enters the throat. People who die immediately from being immersed in water
actually die of suffocation, not water entering their lungs. Not only that, many
people who survive a near-drowning who do have even small amounts of water that
slip by the epiglottis and enter their lungs can die later of fluid shifts and
pneumonia. I can assure you that we do not use any technique that involves true
suffocation or aspiration of water into the lungs. One cannot get questions to
answers from people who suffocate or have water fill their lungs in any
interrogation technique, which would render that technique more than a little
self-defeating. Dead men tell no tales — and also make rather poor
soldiers.”

Mike emphasized that modern military interrogators receive excellent training
and know that coercive techniques do not usually work as well as “positive
incentives” and they will generally work through “echelons” of interrogation to
obtain critical information. Mike would not go into any detail on “positive
incentives” anymore than he would about coercive interrogation techniques
generally used as a last resort. He continued to emphasize operational security
(OPSEC). However, there are many different scenarios for interrogations,
including time-critical emergencies, such as hostage rescue or impending
attacks. “Effective interrogators need every range of options in these cases,
including methods that use coercion to elicit information, for the different
situations that our forces not only might face, but have faced. He used the
examples of rescuing captured American soldiers from terrorists when we know
they will be brutally tortured and murdered if not found immediately and
rescued. “I’m guessing that the vast majority of Americans who vote would not
have a problem with us using coercive tactics to get that kind of information
from a terrorist.”

Mike also took issue with the fact that the MSM and the liberals are wringing their hands over this technique.  “It’s just
blows me away that we’re talking about the frickin’ waterboard over here, when
they’re cutting off people’s heads over there.” Even the panties on the head incident at Abu Ghraib, which was unnecessary and unprofessional was blown way out of proportion says Mike.  The people responsible were dealt with but to tarnish the whole military because of a isolated incident like that is wrong.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview is where Mike lays out the fact that the enemy now understands our weaknesses because of the media.  When captured:

They frequently ask for an attorney as soon as they are captured, medical
care for the most trivial things and claim all sorts of abuses. The message has
obviously been grossly distorted.

He then lays out what their perception SHOULD be.  That they die quickly if they resist being captured, but will live if they give up.  That we will treat them humanely if they cooperate during interrogation but:

they absolutely must believe that we are
fully authorized by our country to use any measure necessary to extract
time-critical information from them if there is a need to do so.

“Anyone suggesting that we should enact some kind of strict rules against
what they perceive to be torture in time-critical wartime interrogations is not
only naive but also dangerous. Interrogators in war zones who are up against any
kind of time frame to recover captured American or coalition forces are likely
to go right up the echelon of interrogation techniques including different types
of coercion no matter what anyone says back in this fantasyland in the States.
And if the interrogators think they could be charged with some kind of crime
because the subject could file a case against them for carrying out their duties
on a known terrorist who is withholding vital information, there is one likely
fate for that individual at the end of his interrogation…death…sort of the
reverse of what these left wing whackos claim to be seeking.”

Ed also interviewed another Navy SEAL who was astounded that this Malcolm Nance would make the SERE training public, hurting our war effort.

So what this comes down to is do we define scaring the hell out of someone torture?  Thats what this is.  They do not drown, as Mike stated, but they feel like they will drown and become terrified.  Being incinerated alive as you sit inside your office cubicle by burning jet fuel – now that’s torture. 

Scaring someone = torture?

As I stated in my earlier post on this subject, this is a technique that should not be used for the run-of-the-mill badguy but if the guy has information that could save the lives of our soldiers, or the citizens of this country, and time is of the essence then hell yes, the guy should be waterboarded.  This enemy we fight have no rights under the Geneva convention. NONE.  Terrorists like all guerrillas that operate outside the laws of war may be shot, and should be shot.  Instead we send the worst of the worst to a virtual Hilton hotel in Cuba where they are given three squares and a warm bed. 

But as Mike stated, they should understand that if we need that information, we WILL get it one way or another.

Instead, thanks to our MSM and the liberals, these guys ask for their miranda rights instead.

What a sorry state of affairs.

UPDATE

JustADude put up a comment from another blog where the commenter purports to know Malcolm Nance well.  What he has to say about Malcolm will surprise no one.