Anyone who says waterboarding is not torture needs to read this VF article by Christopher Hitchens

[LynneSin]

The man actually got the pros to waterboard him so he could write the article.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

Believe Me, It’s Torture
What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.
by Christopher Hitchens August 2008 Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

View a video of Hitchens’s waterboarding experience.
It goes without saying that I knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:

[Fleshdancer]

1. I'm still amazed that he had to experience it in order to understand it

and his experience of it was in a safe, controlled environment.

My top two question for anyone who claims this is not torture are:

1. What is the definition of torture?
2. If you think this isn't torture, then what is?

The idea that we have to argue this is INSANE. We have prosecuted people in the past for this. Water boarding has always been and always will be torture.

[kestrel91316]

2. My dad, who served 23 years in the USAF, taught survival school

back in the early-mid 50's. I think things were a little different then.......