From a reader:
Hi, Jonah. There seems to be a great deal of disagreement over what constitutes a single instance of waterboarding. KSM himself says he was waterboarded on five occasions, all during his first month of captivity. Each session lasted about an hour, and during each session, he was repeatedly waterboarded. And apparently yes, 183 is the number of times he was waterboarded across those five sessions, always for less than 40 seconds at a time and apparently usually for less than 10 seconds each (more on that in a moment). But calling that being waterboarded 183 times probably suggests incorrectly to many readers that on 183 occasions he was taken from his cell and subjected to a session of waterboarding.
Blogger Marcy Wheeler first pointed out the high numbers, including 183 for KSM, and she and others on the left seem to be having trouble with the math. The guidance for the employment of waterboarding restricts its use to one 30-day period, in which it can be applied on no more than five individual days. No more than two sessions are allowed in a 24-hour period, and each session may last at most two hours. Within a session, there may be at most six applications of water lasting 10 seconds or longer. No water application may last longer than 40 seconds. The total water application time may be no more than 12 minutes in a 24-hour period.
Wheeler and others are claiming that the 183 tally blows through the above limits, as even two sessions a day, times five days, times up to six 10-second applications per session, totals a maximum of 60 applications of water. And if KSM was in fact only subjected to one session per day on each of the five days he was waterboarded, then he should have maxed out at 30. But Wheeler and such simply aren’t reading the guidelines correctly. The limits of six applications of water is for applications lasting 10 seconds or longer. There is no limit on shorter applications, except for the cumulative 12-minutes of water per 24-hour period, toward which each short application would also apply.
So it’s more than possible to have 183 applications of water while still adhering to the guidelines, with applications under 10 seconds making up the great majority of the 183.
Now the above numbers don’t necessarily make me okay with waterboarding; I share your doubts. But the case against it should be built with the correct numbers.
[Name withheld]
May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo