Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime
From washingtonpost.com
By Evan WallachSunday, November 4, 2007; B01
As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."
That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is,
the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."
Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:
A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.
The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim:
Q: Was it painful?
A: Not so painful, but one becomes unconscious. Like drowning in the water.
Q: Like you were drowning?
A: Drowning -- you could hardly breathe.
Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:
They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.
And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.
As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.
More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."
In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."
The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be.
Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, teaches the law
of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
By Evan WallachSunday, November 4, 2007; B01
As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."
That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is,
the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."
Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:
A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.
The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim:
Q: Was it painful?
A: Not so painful, but one becomes unconscious. Like drowning in the water.
Q: Like you were drowning?
A: Drowning -- you could hardly breathe.
Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:
They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.
And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.
As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.
More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."
In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."
The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be.
Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, teaches the law
of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
posted by Unknown at 3:53 PM
10 Comments:
Dubious as it might be to post an article such as this in its complete form, I really though this is something people should read. It's not exactly new fact being revealed in this article but it does kinda sum it all up.
how is lego star wars 'mezzo/whacky?
its just that there have been a lot of complaints about screen tearing...both 360 and PS3 versions
i am addicted to cod4 now
well.. if you played the first two and did the multiplayer at all you'll be familiar with the problem. basically it's the same only instead of sitting next to each other on the couch you are playing over xbox live. it would be cool if there were seperate cameras for the seperate players but aside from that it's awesome. i mean.. it's exactly what the previous games were only with added content. they chanced the camera angles on some of the vehicle levels in the ep 1-3 to be more like ep 4-6.
not that kind of screen tearing
real screen tearing...most noticed when you angle/pan the cameras round
on single player as well
when you pan round the screen gets lines going across and the upper part takes a second or two to catch up
more noticable as well on PC games when you havent got the right settings for the game
haven't noticed anything like that, to be honest. maybe it was there but if so i didn't register it.
hmm,well thats good news...prolly still be december time for me...MASS EFFECT next week!!
i still think it's funny that we have laws for war. like war crimes. that seems like an oxymoron to me. like you can be at war but you have to play fair. so odd.
watched lions for lambs last night. that movie will piss a person off! if they have a conscience anyway.
war crimes are a touchy subject here in the UK..or at least they were
i remember about 10 years ago,this 90 or so year old was being charged for war crimes from WWII,the guy was in a wheeelchair and everything...not to sound a bastard,but he looked like he wouldnt last 6 months anyway
it made front page news for a while asking if it was worth it
now you have two views on this,way i see it...first, is it worth punishing a guy for something that happened 50-60 years ago,that he did for his country when everyone was at war?...is it also worth using the publics tax money to send this guy to court in the first place,when that money could be better well spent?
or if you think he is too old,or shouldnt go to court etc...then what about the victims from all those years ago,or the family,do they not deserve justice?
sure if the guy on trial was someone like Josef mengele,because he was one sick bastard with all his experiments on people(chopping limbs of one twin,to see if the other twin would feel it....no anesthetic or whatever)
whereas more recent wars i can see the reason,especially when the victims immediate family are still all alive etc
for the WWII one,i guess i am glad that i am not in the situation where i have to make a decision like that
i wouldnt mind seeing Lions for Lambs,i like all three of them(yes even Tom)..but its prolly a wait until DVD movie for me..and my conscience comes and goes,it hasnt decided whether it wants to be a part of me yet(and its only been 31 years, lol)
laws for war crimes represent a nobler spirit that all mankind hopes to achieve. i'm not saying it makes objective logical sense to have "war crimes" but i think it is the measure of the character of a people to see what lengths they will or won't go to in war. sadly our nation isn't measuring up too well at the moment. imagine, however, if there were no "war crimes" and no geneva convention (not that the U.S. hasn't pissed all over that agreement). given present technology there are lots of ways to win a war.. to kill people.. that are better than bullets and bombs. they are excrutiating, cruel, and inhumane. if there was no such thing as a war crime what would stop a country from using biological weapons or just plain nuking somebody into the stone age and then gobbling up the available resources once things cool off. what's to stop us from filling coffee cans with c4 and razorblades and flinging them into schools? war crime laws allow soldiers to kill but still maintain their humanity. i try to kill you, you try to kill me, we hate each other but once you're wounded and out of the fight i move on to the next beachhead. it's war. it's horrible. but it's better than a scenario such as i try to kill you and you try to kill me and once you are wounded and out of the fight i walk up to you while you're on the ground bleeding and screaming in pain and lodge a couple grams of lead in your head. that line divides men from monsters.
good points indeed. i never really thought about having humanity as you kill people. but that does make sense to have it be fair and add something of a nobleity to it. like we beat you fuckers fair and square without dirty tactics or killing the whole country off with one swift blow. hmmm.
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