Cheney's No-Brainer: Waterboarding can KILL the victim. They don't let him die

[IndyOp]

- they bring him back so they can kill him again.

I posted on this topic on recently here. The US press is intent on describing waterboarding as if it is a harmless 'fraternity prank.' Cheney is describing it as 'a dunk in water.' In light of Cheney's recent statements I am re-posting.

I've added links to several pieces from the School of Americas Watch below. I re-post this with increased confidence that the description below is accurate. I talked to a friend who is knowledgable on this topic and he said that torturers bring the victim back 'sometimes'. If the victim isn't providing useful information over time then, at some point, it becomes too much work to 'bring them back' - they just suffocate to death from the cellophane covering their face.

Statements from DU posts here and here:

The process of water boarding can actually KILL the victim...but he is not allowed to die. He is killed and brought back again and again. This horrid practice is not being given the serious appreciation it deserves. The horrors from hell who do this nasty practice are guilty of far worse than they are being held responsible for.

The person I talked to told me that the victims were often, perhaps usually, unconscious when the water stopped. Extraordinary measures to get the victim's lungs cleared enough to get his motor started again included a tube inserted to suck out water and mucous and often beating on him to aid in the clearing.

When I expressed shock and disbelief, his answer was to the tone of, "if the subject was reasonably sure he was meant to survive the ordeal, it would transform the whole thing into a horrible but survivable experience.

I am afraid to out this person so I have no proof at all that circumstances are as advertised but, when I spent some time thinking about it, it made sense.

My fondest hope is that we take at least one chamber so that we can subpoena some of the torturers and shed some light on this horrid brand of human cruelty.

The only torture they can use that produces this awful motivator is water boarding, as anything else would almost certainly kill the victim permanently.

I KILL YOU.
THEN I BRING YOU BACK.
SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN.
THEN I BRING YOU BACK.
SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN.
THEN I BRING YOU BACK.
SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN.
THEN I BRING YOU BACK.
SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN.

JOSEF MENGELE WOULD BE SO PROUD!

From articles at School of Americas Watch:

The American science of interrogation
...certain techniques known as Category III (such as "waterboarding" and false executions) be halted pending further review. "Our armed forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint," warned William J. Haynes II, general counsel to the Department of Defense. http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=901


Nonviolent rebellion against a storm of lies
U.S. military torture techniques used against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay likely originated in training manuals used at the SOA. The manuals, which were unearthed Sept. 19, 1996, describe “interrogation techniques” such as prolonged hooding, standing and isolation, sleep deprivation, harassment with noise and with attack dogs, extreme cold and near-drowning using “waterboards.” http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=1120


The Torture Debate: Are We Really So Fearful?

It still haunts me, the first time -- it was in Chile, in October of 1973 -- that I met someone who had been tortured. To save my life, I had sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy some weeks after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a government for which I had worked. And then, suddenly, one afternoon, there he was. A large-boned man, gaunt and yet strangely flabby, with eyes like a child, eyes that could not stop blinking and a body that could not stop shivering.

That is what stays with me -- that he was cold under the balmy afternoon sun of Santiago de Chile, trembling as though he would never be warm again, as though the electric current was still coursing through him. Still possessed, somehow still inhabited by his captors, still imprisoned in that cell in the National Stadium, his hands disobeying the orders from his brain to quell the shuddering, his body unable to forget what had been done to it just as, nearly 33 years later, I, too, cannot banish that devastated life from my memory.

<snip>

All those years ago, that torture victim kept moving his lips, trying to articulate an explanation, muttering the same words over and over. "It was a mistake," he repeated, and in the next few days I pieced together his sad and foolish tale. He was an Argentine revolutionary who had fled his homeland and, as soon as he had crossed the mountains into Chile, had begun to boast about what he would do to the military there if it staged a coup, about his expertise with arms of every sort, about his colossal stash of weapons. Bluster and braggadocio -- and every word of it false.

But how could he convince those men who were beating him, hooking his penis to electric wires and waterboarding him? How could he prove to them that he had been lying, prancing in front of his Chilean comrades, just trying to impress the ladies with his fraudulent insurgent persona?

Of course, he couldn't. He confessed to anything and everything they wanted to drag from his hoarse, howling throat; he invented accomplices and addresses and culprits; and then, when it became apparent that all this was imaginary, he was subjected to further ordeals.

There was no escape.

That is the hideous predicament of the torture victim.

http://www.soawatch.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=1214

[IndyOp]

1. Kick.

Right now somewhere, someone can't breathe...