A Lesson For Mukasey: Why I Had Myself Water-Boarded

As a journalist for Current TV, a former military officer, and a student of public policy I have been involved in the debate about the War on Terror from the frontlines in Afghanistan to the policy discussions of academia. In the spring of 2006 a battle was brewing between the Bush Administration and some influential members of Congress over the use coercive interrogation techniques. The conflict over what techniques were legally and morally permissible had been a subtext of the War on Terror for years, but for the most part the debate was occurring inside of the intelligence community, the human rights community, and in small legal circles. It was outside the purview of the American public.

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By April of 2006 the debate about coercive interrogation and its most controversial technique, water-boarding, had started to spill into the headlines. I was in graduate school at the time. As I watched the debate unfold, and listened to both pundits and policymakers give their opinion on whether this technique constituted torture, I was struck by the strangeness of the debate. All of these people were lobbying opinions about a subject they had never seen or witnessed, and that struck me as problematic in a healthy democracy. See, in full disclosure I had a unique knowledge of water-boarding. I had the technique performed on me during my time in the service as part of my SERE training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). I, like all Special Forces operatives who deploy overseas, was sent to a training camp where we learned to resist interrogation and survive captivity, god forbid that ever happened to us overseas. Ironically, one of the many techniques we learned during this training was to assert our rights as told under Article III of the Geneva Convention. So, because I was familiar with water-boarding, I was intrigued by this national conversation that was going on about this thing that few people really understood. But, like many Americans, the pre-occupations of everyday life, for me the pressure of mid-terms and exams, pushed the controversy to the back of my mind.

Then, in mid March I traveled to Cambodia for Spring Break. While there I visited the Tuol Sleng (also known as S-21) prison in Phnom Penh. The Tuol Sleng prison had been converted to a museum and memorial for the victims of the Cambodian Genocide under the Pol Pot regime. As I walked through the museum and saw the photographs of the victims of the genocide, I was shocked to see a picture of the Khmer Rouge Water-boarding a Cambodian villager. At that moment I saw a throughline between the debate we were having domestically and the picture I was standing in front of. I was spurred into action, and upon my return to the United States, I decided to have myself water-boarded, this time on national TV, as a public service, so that this controversial technique could be judged in the court of public opinion.

Kaj Larsen's water-boarding video airs Wednesday at 7pm PST/10PM EST in a one hour special report on Current TV.

Comments

[SaviourMachine]

I don't know which is more horrifying to me,that this is allowed,despite the Geneva Conventions,or that there is a debate about whether this constitutes as torture.

Psychologists are on the record as saying it is not an effective technique for intelligence gathering.

We know there have been many sentenced to prison and even to death in our penal system and due to new evidence have been found innocent and exonerated.

How many innocent people has this been indiscriminately perpetrated on?

As these men are rounded up and given no due process of law to decide quilt or innocence,we will never know.

However,I do know we will pay dearly for this.

[IMPRISONBUSH]

SEEING & hearing GEORGE BUSH thui seven past yearswe the AMERIn people HAVE SEEN A DICTATOR UP FRONT & ALOWED HIM TO GET AWAY WITH IT.
TO DAY AMERICANS have seen a man who want the JOB SO BAD ( U.S. ATTERNUNY GENERAL ) WOULD REPEAT THE WORDS OF BUSH " WATERBOARDING " IS NOT TORTURE
ALL I can say is :
" EVERY ONE WHO SAYS WATERBOARDING IS NOT TORTURE AND WHO WILL BE IN A JOB THAT WILL RULE ON IT , SHOULD BE WATERBOARDED BEFORE TAKING THE JOB.
IF HE SHOULD HAVE A :
HEART ATTACK
BRAIN DAMEAGE
ENDUCE MENTAL TROUBLE
AND OTHER SYMTHENS
WE SHOULD KUST FIND ANOTHER ANSD ANOTHER WHO WANTS THE JOB.

[lornejl]

Bamboo shoots under the finger nails is just something the boys do to let off steam, it's like putting panties on someones head, no biggie.

[fredsanford]

Just watched it. If anyone doesn't think it's torture they should step up to the plate and go through a session.

[HumeSkeptic]

Here is another open letter, from Law Professors around the country. It says, "waterboarding is torture".

WATERBOARDING IS TORTURE
----------­----------­----
(From "Open Letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales")

"Waterboarding is torture. It causes severe physical suffering in the form of reflexive choking, gagging, and the feeling of suffocation. It may cause severe pain in some cases. If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering. The technique is a form of mock execution by suffocation with water. The process incapacitates the victim from drawing breath, and causes panic, distress, and terror of imminent death. Many victims of waterboarding suffer prolonged mental harm for years and even decades afterward.

Waterboarding, when used against people captured in the context of war, may also amount to a war crime as defined under the federal war crimes statute 18 U.S.C. � 2441, which criminalizes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (in international armed conflicts), and violations of Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions (in non-international armed conflicts). Waterboarding is also an assault, and thus violates the federal assault statute, 18 U.S.C. � 113, when it occurs in the "special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States," a jurisdictional area which includes government installations overseas. In cases involving the U.S. armed forces, waterboarding also amounts to assault, and cruelty and maltreatment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice."


http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/06/usdom13130.htm

[TheAqzd]

It's about time HuffPo readers were linked to Current TV. The other station that should be tuned into regularly is Link TV. Enough of corporate media!

[WilliamWallace]

Thank you, Mr. Larsen. We cannot become what we've beheld for the last 50 years.

[Erdgeist]

The psychopathic president ordered torture. It doesn't work. The best method is not torture but to change the cultural trance a person is in. Remember the Stockholm syndrome?

[MBFLA]

I hope all of you have contacted your Senators and told them you do not want Michael Mukasey approved as the Attorney General and why.

[jesusquintana]

Too bad Dershowitz didn't volunteer to be waterboarded as well.

[starrianna]

Was it fun?

[anfractuous]

You can be sure that whoever personally administers torture genuinely enjoys doing so, no matter their country of origin. How gratifying to know that the CIA has been able to recruit an abundance of such people with a formerly disreputable skillset and allow them to exercise their god-given abilities for the good of their country. Were they were not able to torture in some distant dungeon, they might be free to roam our streets - probably as cops.

[MissingAmerica]

Mukasey, Bush and Cheney think that isn't torture? What would you call it? We should not be a part of this. It is clearly torture, and clearly against the rules of the Geneva Convention. This administration is guilty of crimes against humanity. We all know it. Now we need Congress to do something about it. Keep writing your Congressmen! Maybe we can make them so sick of hearing from us that they'll actually do something about these tyrants!

[AntiFascistMajority]

Fear of electric drills


Now that torture is national policy in the USA, even going to the dentist is worse. What if he's got sadistic tendencies? What if he has some inclination to bullying? What if he has an inkling of my political beliefs and feels I deserve a little punishment?

In the system we live under, he's got the green light to sort of let a little extra pain slip in.

As the result of some less-than-optimal dental work in my childhood, I have to have some touching up nearly every year. Yesterday I learned during a check-up that I had two small areas needing work and went in early this afternoon to get it over with as soon as possible. I've never liked the alternating shrieking and roaring of drills in my mouth or the unpredictable stab of pain when a nerve is hit. How much better it would be if we could drop our mouths off at the dentist the same way we drop our cars at the auto shop! But no, it's literally "in our face."

Today while in the dentist's chair, I thought about the corpses that the death squads drop around Baghdad that have been tortured using electric drills. Thank heaven my dentist is kindly and professional and shows no interest in inflicting pain.

It used to be that military people would carry something like cyanide pills (I believe that was it) so that they could kill themselves if captured in order to avoid torture. Maybe ordinary citizens in the USA--those of us who may perhaps disagree with Dick or Bush or oppose wars--should start doing that.
.

[JulieSA]

"I, like all Special Forces operatives who deploy overseas,.­."

Your bio says you were a SEAL, but your article says Special Forces. Which one is correct?