If Waterboarding Isn't Torture, Why The Fuck Did The Khymer Rouge Use It?

[leftchick]

I can not even believe how people on TV and in this mis administration are blowing this off as a "dunk in the water". IT IS TORTURE!!!

This infuriates me! :grr:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/this-is-what-waterboardin_b_30480.html

As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?

Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities. Blank, an anthropologist and former Senior Editor of US News & World Report, is author of the books Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Mullahs on the Mainframe. He is a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has taught at Harvard and Georgetown. He currently is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic staff in the Senate, but the views expressed here are his own observations.

His photos show one of the actual waterboards used by the Khymer Rouge. Here's the first:







<snip>

The similarity between practices used by the Khymer Rouge and those currently being debated by Congress isn't a coincidence. As has been amply documented ("The New Yorker" had an excellent piece, and there have been others), many of the "enhanced techniques" came to the CIA and military interrogators via the SERE schools, where US military personnel are trained to resist torture if they are captured by the enemy. The specific types of abuse they're taught to withstand are those that were used by our Cold War adversaries. Why is this relevant to the current debate? Because the torture techniques of North Korea, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and its proxies--the states where US military personnel might have faced torture--were NOT designed to elicit truthful information. These techniques were designed to elicit CONFESSIONS. That's what the Khymer Rouge et al were after with their waterboarding, not truthful information.


A must see demonstration here:

Getting Waterboarded Video From Current TV.....

http://www.current.tv/popup/extras/waterboarded/video.jsp?vid=http://video.current.tv/video/feeds/extras/rakim/Rakim_live.flv&id=2554940

[malaise]

1. It's torture when they use it but it's not torture

when the god inspired Bushco goons use it.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Because the Khmer Rouge were just frat boys enjoying a prank?

:sarcasm: (in case it wasn't obvious.)

[leftchick]

3. Tony Snow

probably truly has no clue what it is. He probably thinks it is something a boat pulls.

[kestrel91316]

4. I hear it's a great way to stay cool in hot weather.

[leftchick]

5. yeah

and dip in the pool. :puke: