More on waterboarding
I have been reading with interest about Judge Mukasey's confirmation hearings. I realize that my letter comes too late to have any effect on the Judiciary Committee's decision, but I wanted to write anyway.
I applaud Judge Mukasey's declaration that he finds waterboarding personally abhorrent. The thing that I would like to hear him say, that I have not heard him say, is that if nominated, he will actively work toward ending the use of this technique (if it is currently in use), regardless of its legality. I realize that that would go rather beyond the bounds of the duties of the Attorney General, but under the circumstances I don't think it's asking too much.
I'd like to call your attention to some websites related to waterboarding:
- waterboarding.org explains how waterboarding works and provides excerpts from statements by people who've actually undergone it. It's difficult to read. I highly recommend that all Senators, Justice Department officials, CIA employees, and candidates for high political office read it. I hope that you will read it and will pass it along to your colleagues. I hope that Judge Mukasey will read it as well.
- A page on that same site provides several accepted definitions of "torture" in an attempt to determine whether it's accurate to call waterboarding "torture."
- Last week in Small Wars Journal, counter-terrorism consultant Malcolm Nance wrote an excellent piece about his personal experience of waterboarding as "a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego." He says: "Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period." He adds: "Waterboarding is not a simulation.[...] It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning."
- Judge and professor Evan Wallach concurs, in his Washington Post article "Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime." He looks at the historical record, and explains that "U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture."
- An ABC News report describes how Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general of the US, voluntarily underwent waterboarding himself in 2004. See also the related Washington Post editorial.
Waterboarding is torture. The US needs to stop doing it.
I don't have a strong opinion about Judge Mukasey one way or another. I like a lot of what I've heard about him. But my letter here is not primarily about whether Judge Mukasey should be confirmed, because the Attorney General is not the only person who can stop the US from committing torture.
Please work with your colleagues to end this practice. Our government should firmly and unequivocally repudiate and condemn waterboarding and other similar interrogation techniques.
thank you,
--jed
Jed Hartman
Mountain View, CA
