Malcolm Nance and waterboarding

Malcolm Nance offered one of the most important opinions on waterboarding as the debate moved public. His testimony carried considerable weight because of his professional experience. As Nance tells it:

As a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.
(nydailynews.com)

Nance's descriptions of waterboarding helped sell the notion that waterboarding should count as torture. Ed Morrissey, once of Captain's Quarters and now blogging at Hot Air, was influenced by Nance, but during the Michael Mukasey nomination battle wrote about the discrepancies between Nance's descriptions and that of other SERE instructors:

In his column at the Daily News, Nance wrote that "pint after pint" of water enters the lungs, and that the subjects actually start to drown. That description got disputed in two separate interviews I conducted, one with a former SERE instructor and another with a SEAL. The latter, whom I have known personally for years, explained why Nance's previous description made no sense. Mike's secondary specialty in the SEAL force is as an advanced combat medic. Without getting into specifics on his experiences, Mike strongly disputes Nance's exaggerations of waterboarding. There is a word for people who have "pint after pint of water" filling their lungs: dead.
(Captain's Quarters)

Nance appeared to have exaggerated his account beyond what he taught or experienced during SERE training. But setting that aside, Nance's experience with SERE left him only partially qualified to judge the CIA-administered versions of waterboarding, simply because Nance was apparently not in a position to know specifically what the CIA was doing.

Quite possibly, Nance would judge that any version of waterboarding is severe enough to qualify as torture. But his opinion does not matter so much as what the law has to say on the matter.

***

When I started this post, I had been unaware that Morrissey had critically reviewed Nance's testimony. Part of my motivation for treating this issue was Morrissey's initial acceptance of that testimony. The subsequent declassification of various memos has helped to clarify Nance's role; though he is ideologically committed in opposition to waterboarding based on his acceptance that it is torture, his testimony was probably offered in good faith in spite of any exaggerations. At least some of that exaggeration probably occurred simply because Nance was not precisely familiar with limitations the CIA set on its practice of waterboarding.

My post is simply an effort to help set that part of the record straight.