The Shadow of the Torturer
Posted on | November 19, 2006
A SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) instructor and student speak out against the use of waterboarding, which they regard unambiguously as torture. The instructor reveals:
I ran a waterboard team at SERE and administered dozens of students through the process as a tool to show what the worst looks like, short of death. This is why there is a doctor and a psychologist standing right next to the student … to do it safe and to help the student recover. Does it suck? Yes? Would I like to go through it again … never.
That America has gone to the depths of torture hurts my very soul. I know we have damaged our warrior spirit and placed a dark stain on the honor of our military. Not since Mai Lai have we been so dishonored as we have with Abu Ghraib. We have found, though September 11th, the blackest part of our American soul and have embraced i[t] in a fit of false macho.
From the graduate:
[Y]ou are strapped to a board, a washcloth or other article covers your face, and water is continuously poured, depriving you of air, and suffocating you until it is removed, and/or inducing you to ingest water. We were carefully monitored (although how they determined these limits is beyond me), but it was a most unpleasant experience, and its threat alone was sufficient to induce compliance, unless one was so deprived of water that it would be an unintentional means to nourishment.
The problem for us as citizens is we don’t know to what limit or frequency the administration’s agents are using this technique. In my view, what we experienced as service personnel was an introduction to what interrogators could do to us, in order to at least prepare us for the initial shock of captivity. What is done by professional interrogators whose mission it is to extract information is undoubtedly more unrelenting and severe, and most likely exacerbated by any act of resistance.
Since we consider it immoral when captured US personnel are treated in any manner not humane, there is no moral ground for making waterboarding an instrument of our policy against others. Admittedly this is a tough position for some, but I believe how we live and how we fight shapes the perception of us as a nation, and while we may not discourage actual terrorists, we can influence those whose understanding and support are necessary in this struggle.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
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