WP: Waterboarding Historically Controversial

[cal04]

In 1947, the U.S. Called It a War Crime; in 1968, It Reportedly Caused an Investigation

Key senators say Congress has outlawed one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques -- "waterboarding," in which a prisoner feels near drowning. But the White House will not go that far, saying it would be wrong to tell terrorists which practices they might face.

Inside the CIA, waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information -- though "not all of it reliable," a former senior intelligence official said.

(snip)

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk."

(snip)
"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html

[Tellurian]

1. Water boarding was used on the Marques de Sade...

while sitting manacled in a chair, they dunked him ass over tit into a waterbarrel!

Didn't do any good then and doesn't now!