Torture Are Us

I have been a torturer.

That's an unusual claim for anyone on this blog to make, but I can back it up.

Check out this video, which features an interview with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Center is involved in defending some of the detainees at Guantanamo. The feds just announced that they were indicting 6 detainees on charges that could bring them the death penalty, with the "trials" to take place in the kangaroo courts set up by the Military Commissions Act.

My experience as a torturer came a little while ago, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was considering the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General, despite his repeated unwillingness to acknowledge that water-boarding was torture.

I agreed to participate in a demonstration of water-boarding in front of the Justice Department, which you can see a little clip (at 1:14 into the clip) of in the Ratner interview. I'm the guy pouring the water.

That was just a demonstration, a public relations stunt.

And that's what we had intended it to be. The victim was an actor who had agreed to play the part. We'd done a "wet-through," and he was fine. Underneath the cloth, there was a hidden piece of plastic that was supposed to keep the water out of his mouth and nose.

But something went wrong with the placement of the plastic, and it slid down.

The victim was putting up a terrific struggle. Just what an actor would be expected to do.

Unknown to us, he was actually getting water-boarded; without the plastic in the right place, the water was pouring down his nose and throat.

Thank god the container I was using only held one gallon.

It wasn't until after we started to get the victim up off the board that we began to realize that something had gone terribly wrong. He was coughing and coughing, and was clearly deeply upset.

Even in the play-acting phase, I found there was something disturbing in even pretending to commit such violence on another person. As part of the skit, the four torturers were yelling at the victim to confess, to give us the names of his comrades.

But discovering that we had actually been torturing, the real thing, made me want to throw up, and filled me with feelings of great shame.

Now comes our government saying that water-boarding is just fine, it's not torture, and we can even use evidence extracted under torture in the upcoming trials.

There's a reason that everyone outside the Bush junta who's ever looked at water-boarding thinks it's torture. Because it is. I've seen what happens to someone who was subjected to the real thing, even if only for a minute, and there's no doubt in my mind that water-boarding is torture. I am ashamed for my country that our country is in the hands of such a lawless rabble. Watching the Democrats in the Senate roll over yet again for Bush and absolve the telcoms for their participation in Bush's unconstitutional wiretapping only adds to the sense of shame.

And what about the next president? Think of all the powers, the signing statements, the executive orders that Bush has put out there. Will the next president systematically go through this filthy legacy and clean it up? Or will the temptation to hold onto the power that exists when he or she takes office be too demonic? I have no hope for McCain. We should be asking Obama and Clinton, while there is still time to get them on the record.