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.
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.
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Mukasey and all the Neo Cons would crack under a 75W bulb.
Mr. Larsen was very brave to endure that for the sake of public awareness- but it made me sick, I couldn't stand to watch it.
It makes me sicker to think that our country has to debate the fine points of torture, we have the Geneva Convention to refer to.
Impeach CheneyBush now, before they declare martial law.
At least in Vietnam we just shot the motherfuckers. What kind of truth do these morons think they are going to get from someone treated like this?
I think this video is kind of a disservice. I didn't like his laughing and such at the end. Kind of gave it a "aw, it's not that bad" flavor.
The "Resistance and Escape" component of SERE focuses on resistance and survival in captivity based on experiences of formerly captured Americans at the hands of the enemy. THE MAJORITY OF THIS PORTION OF THE COURSE IS CLASSIFIED SECRET by the United States government. However several official sites exist to give a general overview of the curricula.
http://en.
Conclusion: either Mr. Larsen is lying to the HuffPo public or he is committing a felony and endangering the lives of American servicemen and women.
Do it with piss and feces mixed into the water by people who intend to kill you who have already broken your nose, knocked your teeth out, broken your thumbs, and smashed your fingers with a hammer, after you have been kept in a freezing room full of roaches and not allowed to sleep for a few days as you listened to rap and rock and roll to screams and you will start to know....
They government is torturing the SEALS?
This must stop!!!
I think that in order to participate in any discussion attempting to un-define waterboarding as torture one has to leave their human dignity at the door.
That, and be the sadistic type of personality that enjoys inflicting terror on others. Are these the people that should be in our government representing us to the world? Should Blackwater be perceived as representative of the American people?
Absolutely not. Because...
HBeachbum.
Personally, even though I felt the demonstration was pretty mild as compared with what our prisoners receive, it would still constitute 'torture' as defined in the Geneva Conventions.
Your ad-hominem claiming that HuffyPussy was for the enemy, though, is uncalled-for and soooooo 2002. Intelligent people question authority, its aims, and its values, since we're human and not sheeple, and we have reason to believe we're being lied to.
The bad part of this demonstration is that the right wingnuts will just say, oh he lived, can't be that bad. They want to return to the public racks and thumbscrews and drawing-an
The stupid part is that good interrogators know this is useless so this isn't getting about getting intelligence, it's about revenge and power and abuse. Let's see one piece of evidence that anything of value to national security ever came out of any waterboarding.
All this discussion of this technique ignores the real issue Mukasey is ducking and that is he believes the president can do anything. The authoritarian streak that comes naturally to Rethugs fits with "unitary executive" (aka dictator). Keep the punks in line so the rich dudes can concentrate on more tax evasion tricks. Why anyone thinks that rich people in power give a fig about democracy or freedom or morality is amazing - torture is to put fear out there just like the current right wing PR spin that's making us terrified of a few idiots in caves.
Shame on this that we've even let the Rethugs "frame" the issue and get this country into the gutter that we have to discuss obvious torture.
The USA does not torture people. If the country we live in now allows torture (and waterboarding is torture, no matter what its supporters say), we no longer are the USA. It has been destroyed.
If it's torture to tell a prisoner you are going to kill him, put the gun to his head and fire a blank, how can waterboarding not qualify?
Yes, waterboarding does sound like a lot of fun! In fact, it's fun to experience yourself as much as it is to do to other people... or at least Mukasey thinks so:
http://www
Saw the video. You got a lot of nuts there, Squid.
It's not "simulated drowning". It's active denial of the right to breath. I agree with HuffyPussy about what it really is.
Your demonstration of it really conveys what a terrible thing it is that our government feels it is okay to deprive people of the air, to suffocate them. This is sinister.
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