Waterboarding

"Verschärfte Vernehmung"
29 May 2007 12:36 pm

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. The "cold bath" technique - the same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in Guantanamo - was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College,

pioneered by a member of the French Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943. The Belgian resistance referred to it as the Paris method, and the Gestapo authorized its extension from France to at least two places late in the war, Norway and Czechoslovakia. That is where people report experiencing it.
In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether "enhanced interrogation" using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration...



Here's a document from Norway's 1948 war-crimes trials detailing the prosecution of Nazis convicted of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the Second World War. Money quote from the cases of three Germans convicted of war crimes for "enhanced interrogation":

Between 1942 and 1945, Bruns used the method of "verschärfte Vernehmung" on 11 Norwegian citizens. This method involved the use of various implements of torture, cold baths and blows and kicks in the face and all over the body. Most of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the injuries received during those interrogations.

Between 1942 and 1945, Schubert gave 14 Norwegian prisoners "verschärfte Vernehmung," using various instruments of torture and hitting them in the face and over the body. Many of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the effects of injuries they received.

On 1st February, 1945, Clemens shot a second Norwegian prisoner from a distance of 1.5 metres while he was trying to escape. Between 1943 and 1945, Clemens employed the method of " verschäfte Vernehmung " on 23 Norwegian prisoners. He used various instruments of torture and cold baths. Some of the prisoners continued for a considerable time to suffer from injuries received at his hands.
Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end - all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases. Notice the classic, universal and simple criterion used to define torture in 1948 (my italics):

In deciding the degree of punishment, the Court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment in accordance with the provisions laid down in Art. 5 of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945. The Court came to the conclusion that such acts, even though they were committed with the connivance of superiors in rank or even on their orders, must be regarded and punished as serious war crimes.
The victims, by the way, were not in uniform. And the Nazis tried to argue, just as John Yoo did, that this made torturing them legit. The victims were paramilitary Norwegians, operating as an insurgency, against an occupying force. And the torturers had also interrogated some prisoners humanely. But the argument, deployed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Nazis before them, didn't wash with the court. Money quote:

As extenuating circumstances, Bruns had pleaded various incidents in which he had helped Norwegians, Schubert had pleaded difficulties at home, and Clemens had pointed to several hundred interrogations during which he had treated prisoners humanely.

The Court did not regard any of the above-mentioned circumstances as a sufficient reason for mitigating the punishment and found it necessary to act with the utmost severity. Each of the defendants was responsible for a series of incidents of torture, every one of which could, according to Art. 3 (a), (c) and (d) of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945, be punished by the death sentence.
So using "enhanced interrogation techniques" against insurgent prisoners out of uniform was punishable by death. Here's the Nazi defense argument:

(c) That the acts of torture in no case resulted in death. Most of the injuries inflicted were slight and did not result in permanent disablement.
This is the Yoo position. It's what Glenn Reynolds calls the "sensible" position on torture. It was the camp slogan at Camp Nama in Iraq: "No Blood, No Foul." Now take the issue of "stress positions", photographed at Abu Ghraib and used at Bagram to murder an innocent detainee. Here's a good description of how stress positions operate:

The hands were tied together closely with a cord on the back of the prisoner, raised then the body and hung the cord to a hook, which was attached into two meters height in a tree, so that the feet in air hung. The whole body weight rested thus at the joints bent to the rear. The minimum period of hanging up was a half hour. To remain there three hours hung up, was pretty often. This punishment was carried out at least twice weekly.
This is how one detainee at Abu Ghraib died (combined with beating) as in the photograph above. The experience of enduring these stress positions has been described by Rush Limbaugh as no worse than frat-house hazings. Those who have gone through them disagree. They describe:

Dreadful pain in the shoulders and wrists were the results of this treatment. Only laboriously the lung could be supplied with the necessary oxygen. The heart worked in a racing speed. From all pores the sweat penetrated.
Yes, this is an account of someone who went through the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at Dachau. (Google translation here.)
muchmore

So you mean that a law is only then valid and good as long ....

Well, what would you say, if someone from your family is "interrogated" under such methods?

I know waterboarding is torture - because I did it myself

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By MALCOLM NANCE

Wednesday, October 31st 2007, 4:00 AM


Last week, attorney general nominee Judge Michael Mukasey dodged the question of whether waterboarding terror suspects is necessarily torture. Americans can disagree as to whether or not this should disqualify him for the top job in the Justice Department. But they should be under no illusions about what waterboarding is.

As a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.

I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.

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.

How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.

The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again. Call it "Chinese water torture," "the barrel," or "the waterfall." It is all the same.

One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American.

Is there a place for the waterboard? Yes. It must go back to the realm of training our operatives, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines - to prepare for its uncontrolled use by our future enemies. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of Americans may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name ofprotecting America.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured.

Our own missteps have already created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda's own virtual school for terrorists.

I agree with Sen. John McCain. Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.

Nance is a counterterrorism consultant for the government's special operations, homeland security and intelligence agencies. A longer version of this essay appeared on www.smallwarsjournal.com/blog.

Thankfully our government was designed to do what is best for the country, not for any one individual.

There are many things that people do that we don't give our government a pass for.

nice, the rhetorical question asked by our own endearing A2K Torquemada shows why people form governments in the first place and reject the law of the jungle.

White House Blocked Waterboarding Critic

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG and ARIANE de VOGUE
ABC
Saturday November 3, 2007

A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News.

Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.

Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.


Bush Administration Blocked Critic
The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin's predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed.

When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration's legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding.

In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.

But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.

According to retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, "There is no question this is torture -- this is a technique by which an individual is strapped to a board, elevated by his feet and either dunked into water or water poured over his face over a towel or a blanket."

The legal justification of waterboarding has come to the forefront in the debate swirling around Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for attorney general.

While Democrats are pressing him to declare waterboarding illegal, he has refused to do so. He calls it personally "repugnant," but he is unwilling to declare it illegal until he can see the classified information regarding the technique and its current use.

link

Seems, even Americans can be waterboarded ...

Top US legal adviser refuses to rule out 'torture' technique

THE WATERBOARDING DEBATE

U.S. intelligence officers confirm that waterboarding has only been used on three al Qaeda figures. The technique hasn't been used since 2003 and been prohibited by General Michael Hayden since he took over the CIA. Officials say that approval from the White House to remove waterboarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques came sometime last year, but has never been publicly disclosed by the CIA.

Now, the most extreme technique left for CIA interrogators to use is "longtime standing," which includes exhaustion and sleep deprivation as prisoners are forced to stand with their feet shackled to the floor.

CIA officials say the most effective use of waterboarding was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, who ultimately took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and other al Qaeda terror plots including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. A senior CIA official says that it was only because of waterboarding that Mohammed talked.

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that waterboarding actually amounts to torture. So .. the guy thinks he might drown. Does he drown? No. Does he nearly drown? No, again. Is there any real physical harm? Don't think so. If we define torture as making someone think that something bad is going to happen to them ... then what do we really have left?

Let's say it again: If someone has information that might save thousands of Americans from imminent harm ... do what you have to do.

Certainly you can redefine or/and define torture how you want it to be and how it pleases you in the situation.

That doesn't change, however, the definition in the signed treaties and conventions.

The old "I'm not as big a scumbag as the next guy" routine doesn't give anyone a free pass. Torture is torture and the guys who did it and the big wigs will someday have to answer for it.

But I wouldn't expect you to either know that or understand it, McG, you ole centrist you. What a prevaricator!

In order to get the true story about his reasons for the invasion of Iraq Bush should be waterboarded. He the big brave coward would probably spill his guts just at it's threat.

This is ridiculous.

During waterboarding you are drowning. Period. You don't just 'feel like it.' They are drowning you under controlled circumstances which they can end. It is a powerful psychological torture.

It is clearly defined that psychological torture, such as death threats and mock executions, is prohibited. Waterboarding is a mock execution. If the guy screws it up, or just decides to, you're dead and there's nothing that you can do to defend yourself.

The Bush administration has painted itself into a corner; they can't even have a nominee for AG who isn't willing to break the law, otherwise they would be implicating themselves. That so many Republicans are willing to go to bat to defend torture is beyond belief.

Would you want this done to our soldiers or diplomats? Your kids? No? Why not? There's no permanent harm, right?

Cycloptichorn

Anyone care to answer the obvious question posed ? If YOUR child could be saved, what would you have the US do?

I wouldn't have them torture. Sorry, I'm not willing to buy into your false-equivalence/scare scenario.

Would I shoot a small child in the head in order to save my child? Would I rape a woman if it would save my child? Would I dump a barrel of nuclear waste into the water supply of a town to save my child?

The ends don't justify the means. Period. Ever. Even if it is my kid involved.

Cycloptichorn

Stop being dramatic and please provide a direct answer to a simple question.

I don't think "dropping nuclear waste" is a serious answer to a fundemental question.

Neither is 'your kids are being held hostage.' It's not a real-world situation.

No, I wouldn't torture someone to save a family member. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

The ends don't justify the means, ever. Do you disagree with this?

Cycloptichorn

No, I do not agree in times of war. I also understand and accept, the risks to our soldiers. Yet, if information gathered can save American lives, by all means, use all EFFECTIVE methods known (effective is the key word). Beatings, psycological methods have proven to be not very effective since one will say anything to "make it stop".

This is why it is so important to have a govt that understand the impact of military conflicts. We do not have one now and I am not sure the candidates running will be any better.

Sure, and who decides that this person has information that could save all those people? How do you decide that? How do you know someone actually has information you think they do? But best of all, how do you apologize if you are wrong? It already seems the US can't make that apology for sending someone to be tortured elsewhere.

I'm sure we could save thousands or hundreds of thousands if we only got information from Bush about his plans to attack Iran. So why aren't we torturing him?

Muhammed also confessed to killing JFK, MLK, faking the moon landings and wearing women's clothes. As a joke one, one CIA interrogator got him to confess to being a "little teapot short and stout" while demonstrating how his handle and spout worked.