Reply #5: At first I really disagreed with this, thought it was bullsh*t. Then...

[Poll_Blind]

...I started to think about it. I watched the video that had been posted of the reporter who had himself waterboarded. When he was "done", there was a lot of mucous he was pulling off his nose/mouth. I remember that surprised me- I didn't expect that excessive mucous would be produced. Then I read the descriptions the person from your post gave again. And thought about it some more.

  It's sick beyond sick but, yes, I think that some waterboarding probably does wind up "killing" or severely incapacitating the subject and I imagine that it's probably "easy" (with medical staff on hand) to recussitate them.

  I think after having this done to you a few times in a row the body might go into shock or cause cardiac arrest. I'm certainly no doctor but I recall reading that at certain levels of stress the heart really begins to freak out pretty badly. I could be wrong.

  Still, an average healthy man could probably have this happen to them, what, once a day? Once a week? At a certain point, though, seriously, you could probably induce a panic attack, tachicardia and possibly even fibriliation just from beginning the proceedure on someone if they've had this done to them enough times. I've known some people with really, really severe panic disorders and it can put them in a level of shock which might border on the shock reaction associated with blood loss, say, from beig stabbed.

  This is really grisly. Remember, the Administration classifies it as torture ONLY if the organs fail. Gonzales (sp?), the bastard, made that clear. So if there's someone to prevent full-blown organ failure, it ain't torture, then?

  And to do something like that to another human being abosolutely, 100% qualifies for being described as a Nazi/Mengele-style practice. While Nazis did some pretty horrific things to Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, etc. during WW II, their main goal was to use them as slave labor until they were wasted husks of human beings. Then they killed them. They didn't try, as a general rule, to bring them back so as to continue the torture again. This is not the rule though, there were experiments on children which I recall reading about which were beyond sick. Also high-altitude (and other) experiments where Nazi prisoners would lose consciousness, during which Nazi "doctors" might revive the subjects afterward only to begin the horror again.

  This is really sicking me out, I don't want to deal with all the things that are coming back to me on this grisly topic.

  But on review, I could see this happening with some frequency. If the U.S. interrogators wanted to bring the level of torture to this die/revive level, they certainly could do it. And I don't see why they would not.

There are birds outside my window, and they're singing. It's a beautiful day. It disturbs me that outside my window, it's a beautiful day but 1000 miles, or 10 miles, or a mile away there could be someone undergoing this sort of hell right at this moment.

PB