[Sosfbay-discuss] Christopher Hitchens gets Waterboarded: "Believe Me, it's Torture"

[Brian Good]

	Believe Me, It’s Torture
	What more
	can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and
	whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The
	author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands
	of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not
	inflict—it.
	by
	Christopher Hitchens August 2008 
	

Here is the most chilling way I can
find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was
something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted,
and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the
advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion,
Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women
were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to
meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva
Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained
to resist, not to inflict.
Exploring this narrow but deep
distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the
hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by
a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their
country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world.
They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced
interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me
as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.
 It goes without saying that I
knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all
over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to
a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many
times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely
forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had
signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:
“Water boarding” is a
potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive
serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological)
injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the
respiratory and neurological systems of the body.



http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808


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