Waterboarding: Is It Torture?

Having been on the receiving end of water boarding several times, and having been in the intelligence business for several years, I have a couple of points to make about it.

First, water boarding is definitely uncomfortable. It is quite frightening the first couple of times you experience it. As the media have reported, you feel like you are going to drown. I found that it became less scary with each application. After the third or fourth session, my thought was, "OK, here we go again." Water boarding causes no permanent damage, and in my opinion is not torture. Also, I found it fairly easy to avoid giving away "secrets" under water boarding. I know of at least 100 military men who have been water boarded. None of them gave anything but name, rank, and service number. Bottom line - it ain't that bad.

My second point is that the goal of interrogation is to find out useful information from a prisoner. With that in mind, is it important to note that you can make just about anyone say just about anything with sufficient torture. That makes torture unreliable as an interrogation tool. You can't depend on the information you get from torture, so torture simply doesn't make sense if you need good information.

The real reason our enemies use torture is to vent their hatred for our way of life, our religion, and our nation. It has no value as an intelligence gathering practice. It is simply an outlet for hatred.