The torture that is waterboarding: A first-hand account

Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, may not know if waterboarding is torture, but Henri Alleg, the journalist who suffered from it at the hands of French troops in Algeria has a pretty strong opinion that it is. He was interviewed today by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. Read the transcript or listen to the interview here.

For those not following the latest in the ever-expanding ghoulish vernacular making its way into mainstream U.S. discourse thanks to the good folks who brought you the Abu Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals, waterboarding (as described by the website How Stuff Works)involves…

“strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person’s arms and legs so he can’t move at all, and they cover his face. In some descriptions, the person is gagged, and some sort of cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person’s face. Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person’s mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person’s mind believes he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.”

So, is it torture, or just an “enhanced interrogation technique” as it’s listed with the CIA? The Bush administration seems to say it’s not, though only because it can’t/won’t say if the tactic is being used on people. The use of it does have a history that goest beyond French and U.S. occupations. The Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is now a museum dedicated to archiving the horrors of the Khymer Rouge. Here, David Korn’s website shows the museum’s exhibit on waterboarding.