Malcolm Nance on Waterboarding
Jason Kuznicki on Oct 31st 2007
I just get so sick when I think that my own government is doing things like this. Here are the words of Malcolm Nance, a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant:
Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.
We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents…
On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk…
There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists
1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.
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.
Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.
3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives.
This from the same people who encourage us to support our troops.
This is the technique that Vice President Cheney has called a “very important tool” and a “no brainer” in defending the nation. Yet its victims will confess anything. Its other practitioners have included the Khmer Rouge, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the Spanish Inquisition — while it has been universally condemned by impartial human rights groups, by those who have endured the treatment, and even by the U.S. State Department.
Do I look forward, somehow, to being ashamed of my government? No. Am I ashamed of it? When it does things like this, absolutely I am. Loving this country, and loving what it stands for, calls for nothing less.
Filed in The Barracks
Mukasey is actually a big fan of waterboarding — it lets him work on his tan:
http://www.humblenarrator.com/2007/10/31/mukasey-supports-waterboarding-as-100-adrenaline/
What’s absolutely infuriating is Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan’s investigation of waterboarding. His summary: “So, as far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me, this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then still have them alive and healthy within minutes.”
Tragic.
Reference to “waterboarding” seems to be a Rorschach test. We define it in terms of our own frame of reference. As practiced by the U.S., does it involve aspirating drops of water or pints of water? Does it rely on fearful expectation or do the lungs fill with water? Is it simulated drowning or real controlled drowning? Not having the answers, we choose a set of answers.
As practiced by the U.S., does it involve aspirating drops of water or pints of water? Does it rely on fearful expectation or do the lungs fill with water? Is it simulated drowning or real controlled drowning? Not having the answers, we choose a set of answers.
My understanding is that the instinctive fear response is triggered whether the water is in drops or gallons. Read the quoted piece and you will see that the Khmer Rouge used a tin watering can for their version of it.
Even covering the nose and mouth with saran wrap doesn’t do very much to mitigate the effect. Indeed, it doesn’t even help to know intellectually that the people doing this to you are not trying to kill you. This is an instinctive reaction that’s nearly impossible to overcome. Thus it’s a specious distinction.
Jason, your account indicates there is no water in the lungs. Is this a distinction without a difference? I’m not sure. Regardless, the what is-and-isn’t torture go-round seems to lead nowhere, and becomes a matter of esthetics. So, I’ll just stipulate “torture” for the sake of moving on.
Nance points to the unreliability of information extracted by torture, but also writes “including the truth.” Now, the easy way out of the moral dilemma for many people these days is simply to assert that “torture doesn’t work.” Voilà, dilemma erased.
However, if torture works, and lives are saved as a result, it seems to me honesty would require that one state unequivocally that even if it costs their own lives and those of their family, that they still find it impermissible. I can respect that, but I haven’t heard such a bold statement without all the hedging.
(On the other hand, should they make that law for the lives of the next fellow and his family? Another discussion…)
Tom –
I’m surprised you haven’t heard it the kind of statement you’re looking for. Here it is, and I agree with it — and from a very conservative source, no less.
Of course, there is no harm in pointing out that under torture one will gladly confess to being a witch, or a Soviet spy, or a German spy, or an American spy, or a spy for the Vesuvians… This is a relevant point too, I think.
I think what many people overlook is the fact that one cannot discern the truth from everything else said under torture. How do you what is the truth and what is the victim saying to just get the torture to stop?
You. don’t. know.
I think it has been proven over the centuries that torture produces whatever ‘confession’ one wishes, and little else. I agree completely and whole heartedly with point number three on the list, and I do not want that happening to our brave troops.
As a nation, we should be better than this. Even Fox News should be better than to even hint at condoning any form of torture.
If we don’t know after 400 plus years ‘if’ torture works or not, I think it’s time for the experiment to stop.
I think it has been proven over the centuries that torture produces whatever ‘confession’ one wishes, and little else.
I’m not sure if there are instances where torture has been effective or not. But I will say that a civilization that cannot preserve itself without acts of torture does not deserve to be preserved.
Coupled with no due process, how do we even know that the evidence against these suspects is justifiable?
Torture or no, getting the truth is a tricky business. Offering a prisoner release (or special favors) for cooperation also involves (hopefully) sorting out truth from fiction. If the interrogator wants a particular statement (e.g. “I am a witch”) that can usually be obtained. If the interrogator wants the truth, statements must be tested. Sometimes the testing is easy; sometimes it is impossible; usually it is difficult and limited.
Jason—I think the strength of Orson Scott Card’s argument is that it applies to our troops, who are volunteers and ostensibly fighting for American principles. Yes, they have put their lives at risk for them, and violating them to save their lives seems at cross-purposes. A tight argument.
But not the same as civilian lives, and the lives of one’s children. The abstract equation seems to be
Waterboarding = Torture = Immoral = Unacceptable in any case
But I see nothing morally admirable about sacrificing your children because you’re squeamish, altho I could respect—but only in the abstract—the more principled form of the argument I previously posited, and which I have yet to see anyone make with a straight face.
Sorry, AMW, we’re not talking “civilzations” here, but your children.
Sorry, AMW, we’re not talking “civilizations” here, but your children.
In the long run, don’t these amount to the same thing?
Also, the ticking time bomb scenario is a really really strained hypothetical. It requires an efficacious method of torture that somehow yields the truth and nothing but (i.e., a method we don’t have), and it requires that it does so very quickly, and also requires that you knew you had a valuable target, and that you got to him in time, and that you asked all the right questions, that he had all of the information you wanted.
But if you knew all of this in advance, there is also a very good chance that you would know the full details of the plot already, or that you could piece them together through less objectionable means.
Sorry, AMW, we’re not talking “civilizations” here, but your children.
In the long run, don’t these amount to the same thing?
Actually I thought this points out the contradistinction between short and long, the immediate and real instead of abstract and moralistic.
There are many arguments made that bad guys will give up the info without coercion, torture if you insist on the term, and I would enjoy such an easy way out. I won’t even claim those arguments are wrong, altho I can’t concede they’re correct either.
From what I gather, waterboarding has been used sparingly, on the top guys and has yielded valuable info. This I don’t know for sure either. I just leave open the possibility that waterboarding saved somebody’s child’s life, and my arguments flow from there. I don’t expect anyone to sacrifice their child for “American” principles or any other principles. [True, we've had conscription for the military, but at least we give 'em a gun and a fighting chance. But we are not Eminiar VII.]
Before you continue quoting a dubious source, check the Captain’s Quarters Blog at this link:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/015728.php
Malcolm Nance is not entirely who he claims to be, a fabricator of untruths, and not a reliable source.
Read on
What an extraordinary claim, YAIG! I followed your link, and here’s what the blogger says:
I agree with him. I’ve yet to see any evidence that he is a fraud, except for a few people like yourself spamming it in blog comments.
What’s more, torture is the act of inflicting severe mental or physical pain and suffering on someone to elicit information. Are you denying that people undergoing this technique experience severe mental or physical pain? If not, then we’re just quibbling over some details.
@ Tom Van Dyke
Our society puts its basic principles above the lives of your children all the time. For instance, our courts exclude evidence obtained in a manner contrary to the Constitution, even though that often means that guilty people go free. We know that some of those guilty people are dangerous, and will likely continue to hurt and kill. Every time a child molester gets acquitted because evidence that would have convicted him has been excluded, the danger to your children increases.
I could say the same about every requirement of due process: the right to a lawyer, the right to confront witnesses, the right not to incriminate oneself, even the right to a trial, all increase the probability that bad people will remain out there, posing a threat to your children.
The statistical probability that your children will be killed by an ordinary murderer is far greater than the probability they’ll be killed by terrorists. If you accept due process rights that increase the risk of the former, why not a torture ban that increases (you believe) the risk of the latter?
[...] Tilts_at_windmills writes, Our society puts its basic principles above the lives of your children all the time. For instance, our courts exclude evidence obtained in a manner contrary to the Constitution, even though that often means that guilty people go free. We know that some of those guilty people are dangerous, and will likely continue to hurt and kill. Every time a child molester gets acquitted because evidence that would have convicted him has been excluded, the danger to your children increases. [...]
As a former Naval Aviator who attended SERE school and personally experienced waterboarding - I can say the following:
1. It was scary. Was it torture? In my opinion - no. I was not physically harmed. No water gets to the lungs. I was back to normal within 2 minutes of coming off the board. Most of what made it bad was psychological - fear.
2. It was effective. It got me to talk - and to tell the truth. One of the reasons I was waterboarded, is I was maintaining a “cover story” that my captors figured out was false. People always say: “You can’t rely on what someone says when they are undergoing waterboarding, because they will say anything to make it stop”. When you are actually undergoing it - and you have a choice of telling a lie or telling the truth - you tell the truth. That’s because you want to MAKE SURE THAT IT STOPS! If you tell a lie, it might not stop. When you are a captive you assume your captors will be able to figure out if what you tell them is the truth or not. If you lie….you may stop the waterboarding temporarily - but you will wind up there again. You tell the truth. Everyone that underwent it - told the truth. Even the most hardcore resisters broke….and they broke with the truth. Those who say it is unreliable or ineffective simply don’t know what they are talking about. KSM broke in under 60 seconds - and he spilled the truth.
Jim D., three replies if I may.
First, the Geneva Conventions define torture as including both psychological and physical pain. It doesn’t matter whether the pain is purely psychological, so long as it is sufficiently intense, the law is implicated. Mock executions are also listed as an example of psychological torture.
Second, water often does enter the lungs, as I understand it. Moreover, even if OUR interrogators are always careful not to allow this to occur, can we really trust the interrogators of all the other nations, who have seen our example, and who one day may hold Americans captive? I doubt they will care about such fine distinctions
And third, if torture always produces the truth, as you suggest, then why were there so many false confessions under the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Inquisitions?
What blows my mind is that so many people are willing to accept a clearly inflated biography and a dubious series of claims. This in addition to the fact that the SERE experience is classified, that staff and students agree to terms of non-disclosure about their experience at the school, and that if one were to read the rest of the comments on the Captain’s Quarters comments it would become quite obvious that Mr. Nance is very adept and quite the wordsmith, but not everything he claims to be. I especially appreciated how many people accept the “doctorate at the Zarqawi IED university”… How many readers didn’t understand that it’s a tongue in cheek remark and not an actual school? Come on folks, I understand and agree with many, if not most of Malcolm’s remarks about waterboarding and torture, but… There are many things Senior Chief Nance (Ret) wasn’t… By the way, I’ve been at SERE School, as a “victim”… No water entered my lungs, not even a drop, if any one, (check with your doctor), had pint after pint entering their lungs they would be dead, period… Mr. Nance didn’t have that experience, he had the “light” experience, which I grant is rather uncomfortable, but not life threatening… As for the extensive ct experience… I doubt that as well… Those who do it for real tend to keep their mouths closed, even after they retire… How do I know? I am from the same community as Mr. Nance, a retired “Mustang”, and one of the many who observed him while on active duty… Take what he claims about his past with a graing of salt. That said, I will say that Mr. Nance is an exceptional Arabic speaker, and did his duty, like all of us did, but with our mouths closed.
We are such a barbarous nation. We tolerate the beheading of prisoners and journalists and civilians and we think we deserved the Twin Towers and now we are worried that some water may get in the lungs.
We are barbarous… barbarous to our own troops…
I’m reminded that the terrorists at Gitmo have more rights than Americans in U.S. prisons.
Perhaps your perspectives would change under sharia law after having your hand “surgically” amputated, or if a rapist gets off because the woman who testifies against him only counts for half a witness.
The Muslim extremists have big plans for the gay community, too (second only to the entertainment community). The occupied french learned a lesson in barbarity from the Nazi’s and if we continue to play games and bury our head in the sand perhaps our children, or their’s, will get to experience the culturally diverse punishments of sharia law–i.e. Islam.
Speak for yourself, Keith. I don’t think that we deserved 9/11, and I don’t think that the beheadings were at all tolerable. Those were the real barbarisms. Torture of the type we now appear to be practicing is a lesser barbarism. But it is a barbarism nonetheless. And it’s a VERY different thing to experience a training-exercise in torture, rather than the real thing.
YAIG: So you’re with me then? Waterboarding is torture, and we’re just quibbling over details? (It doesn’t have to be life-threatening for it to be torture, remember.)
Jesus Christ, what the hell has happened to my country? Why do I even have to argue this stuff?
I heard an interviewee from the Hoover institute say that waterboarding had been used only 3 times by the US in the “war on terror” and it produced very useful information. Is this true?
The interviewer, Tavis Smiley, did not challenge him at all
Everyone better wake up.put your liberal views aside because what is to come will be far worse than 9/11 and George Bush has realized that right from the start ,and implimented alot of things that may not be popular for a reason.and someday people are going to see who was on the right side of history.tout your liberal views and change things that should not be changed and blood will be on your hands one day.But of course you will be able to deflect that also,the liberals are getting so good at minipulation of the press and the professors of our colleges that as you are seeing now the results of this anti america indoctranation.No matter the blood will be on your hands,go ahead take this great country and put it to ruins,waste all that has been acomplished for this to be the greatest country in the world.some day we, that is, true patriots may have to take it back from those who are putting America to ruins.All we are seeing is the back door being opened to let socialism in when we kept it out from the front for hundreds of years.liberalism,socialism,communism not to much different from each other.Maybe we ought to allow those of you who disagree with the tactics used to get information a free ride over to Iraq or Afganistan for a tour with out military protection,and if you are going to say that your in danger for what we are doing there. free ride to Samolia,maybe some south american countrys just you and your back packs.and if you get into trouble you can call Hillary or Obama they will sit down and talk on your behalf maybe over some tea.While they have brought our military home to clean highways or something.