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Is Waterboarding Torture?
by Dale Brown, 2009

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, May 14, 2009

Doesn't matter. The law says waterboarding is torture, so it's torture.

So Pres. Bush ordered CIA interrogators to torture captives?

In the context of the post-9/11 world, I think Pres. Bush did what he thought was right to save the nation from another attack, so he sought legal cover to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract information from al-Qaeda bad guys. I think Democrats are bringing all this up for political reasons, not legal ones. I believe Congressional leaders fully knew what was happening and completely sanctioned it (and happy they weren't the ones ordering it done).

Do I believe it's torture? Waterboarding is in reality a "stress position." It is simulated drowning. You are far from "one drop from death" but you cannot breathe and it's definitely not comfortable.

I've attended two Prisoner of War training facilities--the USAF one at Fairchild AFB, Washington, and the NATO camp in Panzerkasern, Germany. I was waterboarded in Germany, along with numerous other stress positions: stuffed into a 55-gal. drum, covered in water, and the lid fastened down; chained to a concrete pillar naked while kneeling on bricks; sleep deprivation; loud music; locked in dog cages; bright lights; sleeping naked on concrete floors; digging graves; pushing, shoving, kicked off chairs; hooded and blindfolded for hours; etc.

Did it work?

Everyone breaks eventually. The interrogators find out your weaknesses and fears and exploits them. The purpose of the training camps was to expose you to different interrogation techniques in case we were captured.

Did I give up any intelligence information?

Frankly, as an aircrew member, I didn't have any information to give them. Are you a B-52 crewmember? I'm wearing a flight suit and you found the wreckage of the B-52 you shot down--what do you think?

What other targets were you assigned to bomb? All of them. Plan on this base being next.

How many B-52s are at your base? Look it up in Jane's or Air Force Magazine.

Draw us a picture of your base including all the security posts. Why don't you just go out to the base on Open House Day and do it yourself? I'll give you a tour of my B-52 while you're at it.

We will tell the Red Cross and your comrades you are dead unless you sign a confession and do a video confession admitting you deliberately bombed schools and hospitals.

This is the toughest one. You want more than anything to make sure others and your family know you're alive, but you think doing a confession makes you look weak or traitorous.

Forget about what it looks like. You're in an enemy POW camp. Everyone breaks. Order number one: stay alive. Getting yourself killed by taunting the guards or playing John Wayne with an interrogator violates the first rule.

You resist the best you can, give them as little as possible for as long as possible, and keep the faith with your other prisoners once you're reunited.

So is waterboarding torture?

Not to me it's not. Yes, the law says otherwise. But if I had a guy in custody that I firmly believe had information about fresh attacks on America, I'd turn a blind eye to the law and get out my garden hose and pliers a few times.

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