s
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:
Here's
another view:
How were
they used? Here's a painting
by a former prisoner that
shows the waterboard in
action:
In an
email to me, Blank explained
the significance of the
photos. He wrote:
The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled
down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers
this practice to be "torture lite" or merely a "tough technique" might want
to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and
there was nothing "lite" about their methods. Incidentally, the waterboard
in these photo wasn't merely one among many torture devices highlighted at
the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for
highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture--a tank that could
be filled with water or other liquids; I have photos of that too.) There was
an outdoor device as well, one the Khymer Rouge didn't have to construct:
chin-up bars. (The prison where the museum is located had been a school
before the Khymer Rouge took over). These bars were used for "stress
positions"-- another practice employed under current US guidelines. At the
Khymer Rouge prison, there is a tank of water next to the bars. It was used
to revive prisoners for more torture when they passed out after being placed
in stress positions.
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 [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and
Escape] 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.
Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other
types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most
vile regimes of the past half-century; they're also designed specifically to
generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable
intel. This isn't a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it's
sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.
These photos are important because most of us have never
seen an actual, real-life waterboard. The press typically describes it in
the most anodyne ways: a device meant to "simulate drowning" or to "make the
prisoner believe he might drown." But the Khymer Rouge were no jokesters,
and they didn't tailor their abuse to the dictates of the Geneva Convention.
They-- like so many brutal regimes--made waterboarding one of their primary
tools for a simple reason: it is one of the most viciously effective forms
of torture ever devised.
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The
legislation backed by Bush
and congressional
Republicans would explicitly
permit the use of evidence
obtained through
waterboarding and other
forms of torture. Khalid
Sheikh Muhammad and other
top al Qaeda leaders have
reportedly been subjected to
this technique. They would
certainly note--or try to
note--that at any trial. But
with this legislation, the
White House is seeking to
declare the use of
waterboarding (at least in
the past) as a legitimate
practice of the US
government.
The House
of Representatives voted for
Bush's bill on Thursday, 253
to 168 (with 34 Democrats
siding with the president
and only seven Republicans
breaking with their party's
leader). The Senate is
expected to vote on the bill
today. Its members should
consider Blank's photos and
arguments before they, too,
go off the deep end.
