“It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.”

“Waterboarding is torture – I did it myself”

So declared advisor to Dept of Homeland Security Malcom Nance, publicly repudiating the practice reborn from the middle ages in new and improved form by the Bush Administration. Although the Pentagon has been “banned” from using waterboarding by Congress, the same technique described below has NOT been banned from being used by the CIA.

From The Independent

The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim’s mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.

…. a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. “How much the victim is to drown,….depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject”.

“A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch.”

Nance went on to say,

“…waterboarding is a torture technique – period”.

This is the practice that Michael Mukasey can’t bring himself to say is illegal. He hasn’t been “briefed”, after all. The President hasn’t “read him into” the program in all it’s depraved details… and he wouldn’t want to get any CIA operatives in legal trouble.

While waterboarding has been described by the media as “simulating drowning”, that isn’t really true, according to Mr. Nance in an article he wrote in “Small Wars Journal”,

“since the lungs are actually filling with water”, there is nothing simulated about it. “Waterboarding,” he said, “is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death.”

Mr Nance said US troops were trained to withstand waterboarding, watched by a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a backup team. “When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt,” he added. “Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.“

Indeed. I am left questioning what it is to be an American, myself, these days.

I urge you to read the entire article linked to above. Then, call your Senator and urge them to block Michael Mucasey’s confirmation.

Because enough is fucking enough.