Crossposted from Flopping Aces

You will recall this article a few days ago in which a former SERE instructor for the Navy Seals stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. 

A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.

Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless.

“In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn’t know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat,” Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. “It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured.”

Mike refuses to confirm or deny any specific practices used in SERE school either now or in the past. “If I did, it could be a breach of operational security,” Mike told me. “Giving the intimate details of any interrogation techniques that we simulate on our own people, or use on an enemy combatant that has knowledge of other terrorists or plots to kill innocent people, is sedition, in my opinion.” Mike emphasized this point several times during our conversation. These questions should be asked in secure forums in order to set policy. Having debates over the finer points of interrogation techniques in open settings “only benefits those we may need to interrogate.”

However, he did take exception to one point of Nance’s column, the one that I had found most impactful. Nance wrote:

In the media, waterboarding is called “simulated drowning,” but that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Mike’s secondary specialty in the SEAL force is as an advanced combat medic. Without getting into specifics on his experiences, Mike strongly disputes Nance’s exaggerations of waterboarding. There is a word for people who have “pint after pint of water” filling their lungs: dead. “In fact,” according to Mike, “they would be very, very dead. By definition, anyone who has drowned is in fact dead. A large percentage of true drownings do not involve ANY water entering the lungs because the epiglottis closes off the air passages as water enters the throat. People who die immediately from being immersed in water actually die of suffocation, not water entering their lungs. Not only that, many people who survive a near-drowning who do have even small amounts of water that slip by the epiglottis and enter their lungs can die later of fluid shifts and pneumonia. I can assure you that we do not use any technique that involves true suffocation or aspiration of water into the lungs. One cannot get questions to answers from people who suffocate or have water fill their lungs in any interrogation technique, which would render that technique more than a little self-defeating. Dead men tell no tales — and also make rather poor soldiers.”

Mike emphasized that modern military interrogators receive excellent training and know that coercive techniques do not usually work as well as “positive incentives” and they will generally work through “echelons” of interrogation to obtain critical information. Mike would not go into any detail on “positive incentives” anymore than he would about coercive interrogation techniques generally used as a last resort. He continued to emphasize operational security (OPSEC). However, there are many different scenarios for interrogations, including time-critical emergencies, such as hostage rescue or impending attacks. “Effective interrogators need every range of options in these cases, including methods that use coercion to elicit information, for the different situations that our forces not only might face, but have faced. He used the examples of rescuing captured American soldiers from terrorists when we know they will be brutally tortured and murdered if not found immediately and rescued. “I’m guessing that the vast majority of Americans who vote would not have a problem with us using coercive tactics to get that kind of information from a terrorist.”

Mike also took issue with the fact that the MSM and the liberals are wringing their hands over this technique.  “It’s just blows me away that we’re talking about the frickin’ waterboard over here, when they’re cutting off people’s heads over there.” Even the panties on the head incident at Abu Ghraib, which was unnecessary and unprofessional was blown way out of proportion says Mike.  The people responsible were dealt with but to tarnish the whole military because of a isolated incident like that is wrong.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview is where Mike lays out the fact that the enemy now understands our weaknesses because of the media.  When captured:

They frequently ask for an attorney as soon as they are captured, medical care for the most trivial things and claim all sorts of abuses. The message has obviously been grossly distorted.

He then lays out what their perception SHOULD be.  That they die quickly if they resist being captured, but will live if they give up.  That we will treat them humanely if they cooperate during interrogation but:

they absolutely must believe that we are fully authorized by our country to use any measure necessary to extract time-critical information from them if there is a need to do so.

“Anyone suggesting that we should enact some kind of strict rules against what they perceive to be torture in time-critical wartime interrogations is not only naive but also dangerous. Interrogators in war zones who are up against any kind of time frame to recover captured American or coalition forces are likely to go right up the echelon of interrogation techniques including different types of coercion no matter what anyone says back in this fantasyland in the States. And if the interrogators think they could be charged with some kind of crime because the subject could file a case against them for carrying out their duties on a known terrorist who is withholding vital information, there is one likely fate for that individual at the end of his interrogation…death…sort of the reverse of what these left wing whackos claim to be seeking.”

Ed also interviewed another Navy SEAL who was astounded that this Malcolm Nance would make the SERE training public, hurting our war effort.

So what this comes down to is do we define scaring the hell out of someone torture?  Thats what this is.  They do not drown, as Mike stated, but they feel like they will drown and become terrified.  Being incinerated alive as you sit inside your office cubicle by burning jet fuel - now that’s torture. 

Scaring someone = torture?

As I stated in my earlier post on this subject, this is a technique that should not be used for the run-of-the-mill badguy but if the guy has information that could save the lives of our soldiers, or the citizens of this country, and time is of the essence then hell yes, the guy should be waterboarded.  This enemy we fight have no rights under the Geneva convention. NONE.  Terrorists like all guerrillas that operate outside the laws of war may be shot, and should be shot.  Instead we send the worst of the worst to a virtual Hilton hotel in Cuba where they are given three squares and a warm bed. 

But as Mike stated, they should understand that if we need that information, we WILL get it one way or another.

What a sorry state of affairs.