Here are Josh’s thoughts relating to my previous post:
Laura asked me to write about being waterboarded. I lasted only 4 seconds, and I think I’m a pretty tough guy (after all, I AM married to Laura.) I imagined that it would be like holding your breath underwater, but it is not. Since you are laying at an angle, the water runs down your nostrils, fills your sinuses, and then it feels like pressure is building inside your head. At this point your heart starts racing for some reason, and I reflexively jumped up. You can only take about a second of that. It feels like you are going to have a heart attack, and this racing lasts for quite some time after the actual waterboarding.
The important thing is that there is no safe way to simulate not having control over when the procedure stops, which makes it abundantly clear to me that this could quickly become life threatening if it were done to somebody who is tied down with no control over the length of intervals. I refuse to believe that this tactic did not result in some case of serious or permanent physical injury, considering the lack of discretion our government used in its administration. And I can only imagine the psychological damage.
Damn, that sounds just as scary as it looked. Now if only we could get some of those dicks (pun intended) from the Bush administration to try your little experiment…
Thanks for sharing this with us, Josh. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if you hadn’t had the freedom to get up when you did, to be tied down and continuously be tortured like that.
To all those people who say it isn’t torture and think it is okay, I’d love to see them do it. Better yet, why aren’t they over there fighting in the war?
Once again, thanks!
It really does sound scary. And a lot like torture to me. Having no control to stop anything that you don’t enjoy? Not fun I think.
I’m so glad you wrote this Josh. Thank you. You are totally right about the not having any control and I can imagine you can feel this or have nasty reoccurring nightmares about this. Not to mention what it does to your heart and mind. I can’t believe you actually tried this. I was in the shower yesterday morning and got water up my nose when I was holding my head backwards and choked half to death and I thought of this post. It didn’t seem very funny to me at the time either.
Thank you, Josh. It amazes me how much time and effort goes into finding ways to torture other human beings. Sad. I’m glad you wrote this though – I totally didn’t even think of the pressure building in your head feeling, nevermind the heart racing. Yikes.
What a sickening, revolting and disgusting thing to do to another human being.
That is crazy. I appreciate your demonstration. You are a brave and honorable man. I never put that much thought in to it. Now I will.
I can’t believe there are still people trying to pass this off as excusable.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinon of course and luckily, most Americans will never know the honest to God fear that grips their chest when something truly horrific is about to happen.
During my time in the military, I worked in a very heavily shielded one-man facility in the big five-sided building. It was a steel box, literally. To get out, I had to walk past a very heavily armed security guard and show him my access badge both coming AND going.
My job was to ensure that, in case of a nuclear (or other) attack, communications around the world, and particulary into and out of the five sided building, could continue.
Nightly, I watched my monitors. Sometimes, they would run simulations to make sure we were awake and they looked something like this, “ATTENTION: We have detected an unidentified INBOUND object. Initiate Level 1 response communication immediately.”
I had no idea whether each event was a test or was for real, and each time it happened my heart raced and I thought of all the people that I love and I thought of the fact this is was my job (and people like me) around the country to do whatever we could to protect them. So, I did my job and I sat there for fifteen minutes not knowing if what I did actually helped anything or if I was going to get a message later tell me, “This has been a drill.”
I can tell you though, if it came down to torturing one person for 15-20 seconds (even if it was multiple times), over having my loved ones possibly killed, I’d do it every time.
The sad reality is that it would never come down to a choice between torturing one person or having a loved one killed because, as the unraveling evidence overwhelmingly suggests, information gained from enhanced interrogation techniques is complete bubkes.
It is important to recognize that Zubaida, who was tortured 183 times in a single day, confessed to things that led the CIA on a wild goose chase around the entire globe. Since the request for authorization on the techniques was made before any suspects had been detained, it is conceivable that falsified confessions were anticipated to link Al Qaeda to Iraq, because White House intelligence had reported that no such link existed.
Interestingly, the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon are all spilling the beans on each other, and the only party involved that is not spilling the beans are the terrorists that we were torturing in the first place.
You made a great point, Josh. Thank you. I wonder why our leaders don’t clue in to that.
wow josh….thanks for letting us know what it felt like…the only thing I have close to that was when a lot of doctors decided they needed to do a lumbar puncture to see if I had had a stroke. When they could not do it after over one and a half hours of prodding deep into my spine and after three doctors being called in, they decided to tell me i might not be alive the next morning……I said fine I would take the risk
My point being that whatever is done to a person if it is without your permission and it hurts like hell…it is torture…and one does have flashbacks
So bravo to Josh and all brave souls who try these things out to put themselves in the other’s shoes…this time the terrorists or in some cases poor innocents who were caught up in something they knew nothing about.