"THIS IS WHAT TORTURE IS" (with warning)

[kpete]

WARNING: For those who have been tortured, this description may be triggering to PTSD. If you have lived through torture yourself, please consider not reading this or read it knowing it is graphic and may be disturbing.

Your feet are shackled, and so are your wrists. When you were lead into the room, you saw that it did not have the usual table, this room had a board, and a drain in the floor. You are blindfolded by the guards and roughly forced to lie on the wet wooden board. Even though you are shackled they tie you down to the board with three ropes, one across your chest, on across your waist and one across your legs. You are now completely unable to move, your head is below the level of your feet making the blood rush to your head.

You can hear them moving around and hear a hose running, filling a bucket of water. Your heart begins to race as your mouth is forced open and a wet rag is stuffed inside. There is enough clothe that it fills your mouth, and prevents your teeth from meeting, even at the back of your mouth. You feel a person sitting next you on the board, and they put their hands on your stomach, just above your diaphragm and push down, keeping you from taking a deep breath through your nose. You sense someone else standing above your head, and then the water starts to pour over your face. Not a little, but a torrent of water, it is running up your nose, and you can not breath! Your gag reflex kicks in, but the rag in your mouth does not let you gag.

Your body begins to convulse, convinced in the most primitive of reflexes to try to do anything to get more air! You thrash but the ropes and shackles have you completely immobilized. You feel the water hitting your face, as the person on the bench presses down on your diaphragm, forcing what little air you have out, not in. You are now sure that you are going to die, that you are going to drown, not an abstract, but for real, and right now. Your chest buns with the need for more air, your eyes tear under the blindfold as you struggle to get one more breath.

You are no longer a rational human, you are now just a survival machine, ready to beg anyone, do anything to make the pain stop and get just one more breath. The water stops falling on you. You suck air in through your nose and try to suck it in through you mouth. Both bring more water along with the small amount of air you can get. You hear the hose running again and know that this is not over, it is just starting. Your heart is going like a trip hammer, and you are in a state of terror, like nothing you have ever experienced or thought of. You know if and when they ask you something, you will do or say anything, anything to prevent them from doing it again. Then the hands push on your stomach, and the water starts falling again.

You struggle, trying to hold your breath, but the gag reflex kicks in again, and again you become more animal than man as you struggle for breath your body wracked with pain and convulsively struggling to get free to breath.

This is the horror we inflected on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 183 times in less than a month. It is what happened to Abu Zabaydah 86 times. One time is too many, but we tortured these men over and over and over to gain no actionable intelligence.

more:
http://squarestate.net/diary/8963/this-is-what-torture-is

[ensho]

1. kick - torture is a criminal act

nt

[Xenotime]

2. We are indeed a sick and despicable nation.

[JonQ]

3. I didn't realize all 300 million or so participated in this

torture is wrong, those who support it are wrong, but that doesn't mean even those opposed to it are to blame.

[Echo In Light]

4. In a Rep Democracy, actions of govt are carried out in ALL our names, & w/our $

[kpete]

5. exactly!!!

in OUR name, kp

[bobthedrummer]

11. Yep. Been awhile since we were represented-instead we've got entrenched hybrid corporate fascism

overseen by fanatical politicized corrupted criminal liars (in and out of all branches of "government" that haven't yet been "privatized") that continue to torture and profit from it.

[cali]

6. but that's not the sum total of who we are and losing sight of that

is not a good thing.

[Winterblues]

8. "We" are a divided nation, this is exactly who Republicans are

I hate to say it but a lot of Democrats are not effected by such acts either..If they were, there would be consequences for the people that did such things in our name.

[chill_wind]

7. Wait a minute. The NYT has to check with Dick Cheney

to see if any of that is true:

(cross-post)

They in the mediaocracy still can't bring themselves to speak the truth.

Torture Still Qualified at NY Times
11/16/2009 by Peter Hart

New York Times on the pending trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed ( 11/15/09--emphasis added):

Mr. Mohammed's initial defiance toward his captors set off an interrogation plan that would turn him into the central figure in the roiling debate over the C.I.A's interrogation methods. He was subjected 183 times to the near-drowning technique called waterboarding, treatment that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has called torture. But advocates of the C.I.A's methods, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have said that the interrogation methods produced a trove of information that helped dismantle Al-Qaeda and disrupt potential terrorism attacks.

Apparently Holder's views need to be balanced by Dick Cheney's.

more: http://www.fair.org/blog /


It's starting to look like they will protect the war criminals to the ends of the earth.

[niyad]

9. this is done in our names--with our money

[canetoad]

10. The most telling details

are the refinements; the rag in the mouth, pressing on the diaphram, head lower than feet. Someone has put an amount of thought and effort into making this as cruel as possible.

[chill_wind]

12. One of the top medical-psychiatric consultants

brought in and responsible for helping engineer new and improved torture was named in media reports and DU discussions months ago, if I remember. I'm not sure where he falls on Panetta's "there will be no witch hunts" list of officials who "were just following orders."