Waterboarding: A Tortured History . . .
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USA didn't invent it, just "adopted" it. (sigh)
Waterboarding: A Tortured History
November 3, 20071:56 PM ET
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Leaves No Marks
"The patient strangled and gasped and suffocated and, at intervals, the toca was withdrawn and he was adjured to tell the truth. The severity of the infliction was measured by the number of jars [of water] consumed, sometimes reaching to six or eight," writes Henry Charles Lea in A History of the Inquisition of Spain.
"The thing you could not do in torture was injure the body or cause death," Peters says. That was — and still is — what makes waterboarding such an attractive interrogation technique, he says: It causes great physical and mental suffering, yet leaves no marks on the body.
Waterboarding actually refers to two different interrogation techniques. One involves pumping water directly into the stomach. "This creates intense pain. It feels like your organs are on fire," says Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College in Oregon and author of a new book, Torture and Democracy.
The other technique — the one more widely used today — involves choking the victim by filling their throat with a steady stream of water — a sort of "slow-motion drowning" that was perfected by Dutch traders in the 17th century. They used it against their British rivals in the East Indies.
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MORE at link https://www.npr.org/2007/11/03/15886834/waterboarding-a-tortured-history
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Apparently it was used by the Japanese on American POWs
We've sunk to that level
W
