Torture Loophole: 'Water Treatment' Versus Waterboarding

Think Progress:

In February, CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that his agency used waterboarding on three al Qaeda suspects. But revelations from a former detainee in a hearing yesterday raise questions as to whether the administration has been playing word games with its definition of "waterboarding."

Murat Kurnaz, "freed from Guantanamo in 2006 after a personal plea from German Chancellor Angela Merkel," detailed the gross abuses he underwent in U.S. custody yesterday. Kurnaz said he was subjected to "water treatment" which involved a "strong punch" that forced him to inhale water. Asked if this was waterboarding, Kurnaz said "water treatment" is different:

Read the whole story: Think Progress

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

When American commanders executed Japanese officers for the war-crime of torture ... specifically, waterboarding ... they did not take a lesson in the Japanese language before doing so.

There are only a few infinite quantities in nature, but here are four:

(1) Human Greed.
(2) Human Arrogance.
(3) Human Cruelty.
(4) Human Blindness.

At no point is a Fairy Godmother going to come swishing out of the sky with a pair of ruby slippers to lift this country out of the morass of its own making. This is what happens when the Supreme Law of the Land is set aside. When impeachment "of any civil officer" is brushed "off the table."

There are more than 300 million plaintiffs in this country alone; many times that number in the world community surrounding it. This country, and the peace and the progress of the civilization on this lonely planet, is worth a great deal more to Us than it is to Them.

[wolfi101]

There's a quick fix to this...

take everyone who says its not, tie them down, and submit them to it for a few hours or days.
Then ask them, if it's torture or not.

[HatingTheGame]

Water treatment? What's that, something like an enema?

[livesimply]

Torture is torture. But as GW so elequently stated "The US does not torture."