Monday, December 10, 2007

Waterboarding.org

Waterboarding.org ostensibly exists to clear up confusion about waterboarding.

I take the the owners of the site at their word on that, but the enterprise is off to a shaky start.

They offer a page featuring "firsthand accounts" of waterboarding, prominently featuring that of Malcolm Nance (noted here). The other account, by Henri Alleg, was from Algeria in the 1950s.
The Nance account features "pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs" and Alleg mentioned (albeit not reproduced at Waterboarding.org) "the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed."

The problem, as I noted with Nance's congressional testimony, is the apparent lack of congruence between the firsthand accounts and other contemporary accounts of the technique. And that's where Waterboarding.org comes back into play. Another page at the site describes waterboarding:
Pour water onto the inclined face so that the water runs into the upturned mouth and nose. The water stays in the head, filling the throat, mouth, and sinuses with water. The lungs don't fill up with water so your prisoner doesn't asphyxiate, but they *do* feel their entire upper respiratory system from sinuses to trachea filled with water, "simulating drowning". You're drowning your subject from the inside, filling their head and neck. The lungs stay out of the water, keeping oxygen in the blood and prolonging the glubbing.
If "(t)he lungs don't fill up with water" then why does Nance describe the opposite?

The folks at Waterboarding.org have their work cut out for them. The harsh interrogation techniques employed by the United States are classified secrets. Either the information will be leaked illegally or come from someone to whom the information was illegally leaked, unless the information simply isn't reliable (in which case it could come from anyone!).

The desire to bring the techniques to light is partially understandable--we can't know what we're talking about unless the techniques receive clear description. On the other hand, the clear description may remove some of the value of the techniques (which is the main reason they're kept secret in the first place).

There is a place for secrecy when it comes to interrogation techniques. The desire for clarity is laudable in terms of ultimately deciding whether or not the United States ought to used harsh interrogation methods where those methods arguably (if not in fact) constitute torture. That decision probably best rests with bipartisan groups within the government (oversight committees) rather than with the general public.


*****

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please remain on topic and keep coarse language to an absolute minimum. Comments in a language other than English will be assumed off topic.