[Jill]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

You have no frigging idea what you are talking about.

Actually, she does, and you don't. To confirm that, why don't we ask one of our servicemen who was a part of that program. . .

Waterboarding Is Torture, Says Ex-Navy Instructor

A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.

Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless.

. . .

It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."

. . .

SERE attendees expect to be released and assume that their trainers will not permanently harm them. Nance said it is "stress inoculation" meant to let U.S. troops know what to expect if they are captured. "The SERE community was designed over 50 years ago to show that, as a torture instrument, waterboarding is a terrifying, painful and humiliating tool that leaves no physical scars, and which can be repeatedly used as an intimidation tool," he said.

A detainee, on the other hand, "has no idea what is about to happen to them," Nance said, and could legitimately fear death. "It's far worse," he said.

I think I'll take the word of someone with first-hand experience, both in training and being the recipient of this technique, over some dude on a message board whose partisan panties are in a twist.