I’ve always been on the fence about whether waterboarding constituted torture. But if the reports are true that the CIA used it scores of times in a single month on a single prisoner, than I think the threshhold has been met. Debating wether it was worth it still seems open to debate, depending on the facts. But I think waterboarding someone 183 times in a month does amount to torture no matter how you slice it.
Update: Interesting take from a military guy:
Jonah,
As my last email hinted, with sarcasm, we have a different perspective around the office here (as we are all veterans). Some of us were waterboarded ourselves during our training (learning how to resist interrogation).
I can assure you that waterboarding is something to be avoided, and it is most unpleasant. You CAN be drowned during the process and whether that happens depends on the mercy of your captors. The reason it’s used is that it doesn’t cause any damage (unless you’re actually drowned).
So from our perspective, anyone who can withstand 183 turns at the waterboard is either SUPER TOUGH because it took 183 turns to get all the info out of him, or he has figured out that his captors are not actually going to kill him and has stopped fearing the technique.
Thus it may be “torture,” but in this case it is not very effective torture. Truly brutal techniques work much faster.
This reader agrees:
Very different take on your torture comments. If something was happening to me 6 times every day for a month, it is quite safe to say it isn’t very torturious. If it was torture and as bad as the liberals say it is nobody would tolerate 6 times every day for a month. At it worst it sounds like something someone got used to rather quickly and decided it wasn’t all that bad and certainly worth holding out.