What Water Boarding Looks Like

• September 29, 2006

Via David Corn, here’s an image of one water boarding method taken from a museum in Cambodia:

Anyone have a problem with doing that to a terrorist to get information to thwart an attack that could potentially kill thousands?
I certainly don’t.
Also, it’s interesting that this image comes from a museum focused on the atrocities of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Critics of our nation’s interrogation tactics in the war on terror might be tempted to say that, because we use a tactic the Khmer Rouge used, we’re as bad as they are. I don’t think you can necessarily draw that conclusion. For one thing, just because we do something the Khmer Rouge did doesn’t mean we’re equivalent to them. The Khmer Rouge probably ran post offices too, just like we do. For another thing, the Khmer Rouge used water boarding as a tool to prop up their regime. We’re using it to collect information from terrorists to keep our freedoms and liberties intact.

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http://Array robert108

Woof: Forgive me for my impertinence, but do we relocate family members to different parts of the country? Have we abolished all postal and telephone services? Any plans to do those things?
Your feeble try at equivalence here is not only predictable, but laughable.
2Hotel9

Again, we are not interested in confessions. If you are so concerned with the safety and wellbeing of these murdering scumbags why aren’t you helping them win their war? Or is that what you’re doing? 5th columnist? Or just an idiot?
carrick

Rob, my only point is we haven’t exactly been lacking in intelligence failures lately.

Like you I tend to assume that people who are in a profession know what they’re doing. For some reason, since Clinton slashed the intelligence budgets in the early 90s (too “icky” I think), our intelligence service hasn’t exactly made me feel overly confident. So some skepticism of their methodology, I think, has duly been earned.
robert108

Carrick: Point taken, but the individual intel officers still aren’t going to use unproductive methods, no matter how screwed up the structure of the agency is. As a matter of fact, due to that bad structure, there is more of a demand for efficient and effective techniques of interrogation. Actually, the damage to our intel gathering started with Carter. He hated the CIA, and a lot of the troubles we are having with that agency today are sourced in the Carter admin tactics.
2Hotel9

And once again I will reiterate. We are not seeking confessions. We are stripping information. Every single thing they know, have said,or done, every single person they know, every single place they have been, every single thought they have had in their entire lives. Write it all down. Then you do it all again. Compare to first list. Then you do it again. Compare to first and second. Then you do it again. Compare to 1st and 2nd and 3rd. Then you do it again. Compare to 1st,2nd,3rd and 4th. Then you do it again. woofie,gregie,davey innstead of being worried about the rights of terrorists how about showing just the tiniest amount of concern for the rights of the children and women they so gleefully murder? Their own children and women.
carrick

Rob, my only point is we haven’t exactly been lacking in intelligence failures lately.

Like you I tend to assume that people who are in a profession know what they’re doing. For some reason, since Clinton slashed the intelligence budgets in the early 90s (too “icky” I think), our intelligence service hasn’t exactly made me feel overly confident. So some skepticism of their methodology, I think, has duly been earned.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

I betcha sometimes they used to make people sit around in rooms for a long time in Cambodia too.

While you not listen to the teacher drone on and on.

I knew that was torture!
gregdn

Hotel:
I’ve almost drowned, so I think I can use my imagination, but maybe you’re just tougher than the rest of us.
If this doesn’t qualify as torture, what would you think of letting the police use this to elicit confessions from suspects?
carrick

A point I’ve made before but I think worth repeating. How effective is it as a means of intel gathering?

Maybe in a few extreme examples. But you’ve probably heard the story by now of the inmate who had his victim’s name tattooed to his forehead (not by choice). [The full-res picture can be found here],

Here’s the punchline

Another man confessed to the killing at one point but was cleared after DNA and other evidence connected Stockelman to the crime.

Most people, you don’t have to go the extent of waterboarding them to get a confession out of them. If you are using it as an unbiased means of intel gathering (as opposed to part of a criminal investigation), maybe it would work.

But I’m pretty skeptical that you wouldn’t end up inadvertently getting them to mirror back to you whatever you showed interest in, no matter how false it was.

“Facilitated communication” is just such an example. Supposed “facilitators” could help severely handicapped children to communicate, e.g., via a keyboard. Actually all that was happening was the children were getting cues from the facilitator which they could understand, even when they had no ability (as in missing that part of the brain) to decode the speech of the person they were supposedly listening to.

After all the problems we’ve see with the intel community gathering flawed data, including some obtained under intense duress, I just have to say, I don’t think it is very plausible that you would get what you were looking for this way, very often. Just a poor method of data gathering, along with “truth serum” and other short cuts to standard interrogation methods. IMHO.
robert108

gregdn: Moral relativism=nothing is really either right or wrong; it’s all gray.
robert108

Carrick: As a general rule, interrogators don’t waste time on unproductive methods. This is the essence of the phony Dem “torture” allegations. They imply that we are just being mean to the poor terrorists. They have it completely and entirely wrong, as usual. It’s just more of their political posturing.
If they really believed in the Golden Rule, they would be polite to the President.
gregdn

I think waterboarding qualifies as torture and I wish we wouldn’t do it.
2Hotel9

If it will gain information that stops the suspect’s cohorts for murdering children and women, yes. As for confessions, coerced confessions are inadmissable and one of the fastest ways to gain a mistrial in our judicial system. We are not getting them to admit anything, being taken while committing terroristic acts is all the confession needed. We are stripping information from them. And you do not want to know how far I would go to gain that needed information. Oh, and yes, they lie during interogation. That is why you do it over and over, comparing the information each time. In the end everyone tells the truth, want to or not, everyone breaks.
Dave

I totally agree, Rob. In fact, I recommended water-boarding several weeks ago, as well as immersion in slowly boiling water.
gregdn

Hotel:
No, I don’t hate America and no, I don’t want the terrorists to win.
I just don’t want our country to sink to the same level as our enemy, and IMO using methods endorsed by the Khymer Rouge qualifies.
gregdn

“We are not getting them to admit anything, being taken while committing terroristic acts is all the confession needed.”
You seem to think we catch all the suspected terrorists ‘in the act’ KSM was in bed. A lot of them are turned in by people for reward money.
And if you’re torturing Oops- using ‘persuasive methods’ on a guy to strip information from him wouldn’t that inevitably lead to a confession?
2Hotel9

Khmer Rouge endorse education and medical care, you want to stop doing those little items, too?
2Hotel9

Yea, right, whatever you say.
robert108

Woof: You lie to mislead, as usual. We, along with many other countries, use this particular interrogation technique. It isn’t “torture”. What part of that don’t you understand?
It makes us concerned with winning this war. You might want us to lose, but I don’t.
I already know what I want to know from myself, so why would I do such a thing? That would be stupid.
gregdn

Hotel:
Moral Relativism = you disagree with me
2Hotel9

And I ask you woofie, ever been boarded? Ever been hungry for more than a few hours, had to stand at attention for 6-8 hours? It was the moral relativism of leftards like you that pulled us out of south-east Asia and lead to the Khmer Rouge rein of terror. Not to mention the “re-education” pogram in VietNam.
2Hotel9

Ever been boarded, greg? I have been, got an introduction to interogation methods in SERE and I can assure you they do not qualifiy as torture. You need to acquaint yourself with real torture, because what America does at Gitmo or Abu Ghariab ain’t it.
robert108

Rob: Think about it: the end always justifies the means; it doesn’t justify any means.
robert108

BTW, for the science-challenged, at sea level water boils at two hundred twelve degrees Farenheit; period.
WOOFX

I was a soldier too 2hotel.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Carrick, your point is a good one and worth repeating, but let me also make the same counter-argument I’ve made in the past: It’s not like our intelligence agencies act on the information they get from these techniques in a vacuum.

These confessions are just one piece of a puzzle that draws its pieces from all sorts of sources. My father, a homicide investigator for two decades, has told me that he routinely had to deal with people who, for whatever reason, confessed to crimes they didn’t commit.

False information isn’t anything experienced interrogators are going to be surprised by. They know how to deal with it.

I don’t think we’re torturing these things because our troops or intelligence agents like to be cruel. I think they’re doing it because it works, and if it works why shouldn’t we do it?
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

If making people feel like they’re going to drown gets us good intelligence to fight the war on terror, I’m not against it.
WOOFX

Maybe a couple of hours, days, weeks,
months of waterboarding
might change your opinion .

As the Khemer Rouge said:

“To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I betcha sometimes they used to make people sit around in rooms for a long time in Cambodia too.

We do that too so, you know, WE’RE JUST LIKE THE KHMER ROUGE!!!11!!!

Sometimes the ends to justify the means. Water boarding is pretty awful, from what i’ve heard, but it does no permanent damage. And if it gets us the info we need to keep us safe, I’m all for it.
WOOFX

The Khmer Rouge…

family members were often relocated to different parts of the country with all postal and telephone services abolished

Our Water Brothers
WOOFX

We share torture methodologies with the Khmer Rouge.
The K Rouge were nutball Ideologues,
you understand that?
What does that make us.

ends justifies the means nonsene,

Take a towel into the shower with you
and try some waterboarding.

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What Water Boarding Looks Like

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