Is Waterboarding Torture?

Is Waterboarding Torture?

I was not comfortable with waterboarding--about the only technique actually used at Gitmo that I would be inclined to call torture--but interestingly enough, not everyone shares my view. And not just the people that you were thinking. From January 23, 2009 Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's choice for top U.S. spy declined on Thursday to call waterboarding "torture," only days after his attorney general nominee condemned the interrogation practice as precisely that.

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair replied cautiously when pressed on the waterboarding question at a hearing on his nomination to be director of national intelligence, of which the CIA is a part.

The caution reflected a public debate over whether to prosecute CIA employees who used the simulated drowning technique. Torture is banned by U.S. and international laws.

"There will be no waterboarding on my watch. There will be no torture on my watch," Blair said, refusing to go further.

There are several things that bother me greatly about this whole discussion:

1. A number of Democratic members of Congress knew about waterboarding when it was being done in the months immediately following 9/11--and didn't seem to have a problem with it. Their sudden concern about it smells of politics more than principle.

2. From what I can find, a total of three persons--all known terrorists believed to have operational information about immediate post-9/11 attacks--were subjected to waterboarding. One of them was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks. This was the result of excessive zeal to save American lives at a time when we didn't know what was coming next--and if the anthrax letters were part of that effort. Call it a terrible mistake if you want, and vow that we won't do it again, if it makes you feel better, but Democrats getting self-righteous about this is just partisan politics.

3. There's a lot to be said for leaving uncertainty in the minds of terrorists what they might be subject to if taken into custody. A solemn vow that we will never do anything, no matter how severe the threat, is essentially telling the terrorists that they have nothing to fear but a severe talking to from the CIA.

UPDATE: A reader pointed me to this account in the November 5, 2007 National Review Online of how waterboarding caused Khalid Sheik Mohammed to give up information that broke up several bombing plots within the United States:

KSM, as intelligence agencies call him, directed the September 11 attacks, which killed 2,978 people and injured at least 7,356. “I am the head of the al-Qaeda military committee,” he told Al Jazeera in April 2002. “And yes, we did it.” KSM wired money to his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the February 1993 World Trade Center blast that killed six and wounded 1,040. KSM and Yousef planned Operation Bojinka, a foiled 1995 scheme to explode 12 American jetliners above the Pacific. While some doubt his claim, KSM reportedly said, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the City of Karachi, Pakistan.”

U.S. and Pakistani authorities captured KSM on March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. KSM stayed mum for months, often answering questions with Koranic chants. Interrogators eventually waterboarded him — for just 90 seconds.

KSM “didn’t resist,” one CIA veteran said in the August 13 issue of The New Yorker. “He sang right away. He cracked real quick.” Another CIA official told ABC News: “KSM lasted the longest under water-boarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again.”

KSM’s revelations helped authorities identify and incarcerate at least six major terrorists:

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Ohio-based trucker Iyman Faris pleaded guilty May 1, 2003 to providing material support to terrorists. He secured 2,000 sleeping bags for al-Qaeda and delivered cash, cell phones, and airline tickets to its men. He also conspired to derail a train near Washington, D.C. and use acetylene torches to sever the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables, plunging it into the East River.

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Jemaah Islamiya (JI) agent Rusman “Gun Gun” Gunawan was convicted of transferring money to bomb Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel, killing 12 and injuring 150.

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Hambali, Gunawan’s brother and ringleader of JI’s October 2002 Bali nightclub blasts, killed 202 and wounded 209.

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Suspected al-Qaeda agent Majid Khan, officials say, provided money to JI terrorists and plotted to assassinate Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, detonate U.S. gas stations, and poison American water reservoirs.

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Jose Padilla, who trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was convicted last August of providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to kidnap, maim, and murder people overseas. Padilla, suspected of but not charged with planning a radioactive “dirty bomb” attack, reportedly learned to incinerate residential high-rises by igniting apartments filled with natural gas.

And there are a number of other plotters that KSM gave up after 90 seconds of waterboarding.

UPDATE 2: It appears that KSM was waterboarded in Afghanistan--not at Gitmo. From the December 12, 2007 Daily Mail:

Mr Kiriakou told how waterboarding was used on Zayn Abu Zubaida, the first high-ranking Al Qaeda member captured after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Abu Zubaida was seized in a gun battle in Pakistan in the spring of 2002. For weeks he refused to talk and remained ideologically zealous, defiant and unco-operative. Then he was flown to a secret CIA prison - believed to be in Afghanistan - and strapped to a board with his feet in the air.
Cellophane was wrapped around the Al Qaeda man's face and water was forced up his nose and into his throat to make him think he was drowning.
The suspect lasted only 35 seconds before he broke.
"It was like flipping a switch," said Mr Kiriakou.
"From that day on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.
"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get.
"I struggle with it.