Detainee Reveals Potential Torture ‘Loophole’: ‘Water Treatment’ Is Different Than ‘Waterboarding’
Detainee Reveals Potential Torture ‘Loophole’: ‘Water Treatment’ Is Different Than ‘Waterboarding’
In February, CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that his agency used waterboarding on three al Qaeda suspects. But revelations from a former detainee in a hearing yesterday raise questions as to whether the administration has been playing word games with its definition of “waterboarding.”
Murat Kurnaz, “freed from Guantanamo in 2006 after a personal plea from German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” detailed the gross abuses he underwent in U.S. custody yesterday. Kurnaz said he was subjected to “water treatment” which involved a “strong punch” that forced him to inhale water. Asked if this was waterboarding, Kurnaz said “water treatment” is different:
ROHRABACHER: You suggest that you were waterboarded in your captivity. Is that correct?
KURNAZ: No, it’s not waterboarding. It’s called “water treatment.” There was a bucket of water.
ROHRABACHER: Was a cloth put over your face and you were put on a board?
KURNAZ: There was a bucket of water. And they stick my head in it and at the same time, punch me into my stomach.
Rohrabacher responded: “The CIA is claiming that only three people have been waterboarded. And this may be a loophole that they’re suggesting that’s not ‘waterboarding.’” Watch it:
Kurnaz said that he was subject to “water treatment” once but that other detainees reported similar treatment. “There was prisoners who told me the same thing was happening to them,” he said.
Yesterday’s Justice Department Inspector General report also documents a 2004 interrogation in Iraq where interrogators “put water down” a detainee’s throat to mimic “the sensation that he was drowning.” The report says this is not “waterboarding,” but “this rough technique was part of an effort to intimidate the detainees and increase their feelings of helplessness.”
Kurnaz’s testimony suggests that, contrary to the administration line, more than three detainees have been subject to water torture. “It seems that we have a new definition,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) in the hearing. “If you were wedded to the language of waterboarding, now we have new language called ‘water treatment,’ which may bear on being torture as well.”
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We didn’t put bamboo chutes under his fingernails – - we gave him a Chinese Manicure.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:18 pmIt is amazing the ways evil men can rationalize their actions
May 21st, 2008 at 3:20 pmhmmmm…. playing with semantics… where have I heard the Right Wing go to town criticizing someone for, now what was it…? OH yes, “it depends on what ‘is’ is”.
I’d rather have someone who parses the definition of ‘is’ to hide an affair then someone who renames torture to avoid being prosecuted for war crimes anyday…
May 21st, 2008 at 3:21 pmAnd it’s just perfect that right-wing, Huntington Beach surfer dude Rohrbacher should be questioning a detainee about waterboarding.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.”
“Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.”
“Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.”
“The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.”
May 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pmJimmy Carter
They’re playing with words to justify their actions? Surprise surprise.
Explain to me again why impeachment is off the table, Nancy?
May 21st, 2008 at 3:25 pmYeah, water treatment sounds like way more “fun” than waterboarding. Oh yeah, I’m reallllly proud to be an American. Thanks W and the rest of the fascists known as Bushco.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pmDick Cheney did lay it out for everyone. He is on record saying “it’s like a dunk in the water.”
May 21st, 2008 at 3:34 pmhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700560.html
From his lips to practice?
May 21st, 2008 at 3:37 pmwater treatment is different from waterboarding in the same way that hot coals is different from thumbscrews.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:42 pmVOTE OBAMA !!!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 3:44 pmI imagine that the term “water treatment” is used because it sounds like something that one might pay for in an exclusive spa. You know, something with bath salts and jacuzzi jets.
Kind of goes with the “Caribbean resort” spin given to Gitmo…
May 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pmWATER TREATMENT is how I irrigate my lawn!
May 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pmWhen will this nightmare ever end?
JWNBP (Jesus would not be proud)
Playing semantics, using words to say what they really don’t mean.
The Nazis did the same thing, resettlement really meant extermination.
Nazism did not die, it became the Bush administration.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pmJust replace the water with beer in the bucket and you’ll have a new fraternity pledge ritual. Then again, the “sucker punch” is the top tactic when it comes to the GOP in regards to everything and anything.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:54 pmThese idiotic word games HAVE TO STOP. Whatever it is they are doing, it is immoral and depraved, has no useful value, makes us more hated around the world, and is so soul-suckingly awful it won’t matter if we win the ‘War on Terrah’ because there won’t be anything left to celebrate about our country. It’ll become a cuntry.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:59 pmTwo Words: Regime Change.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:03 pmIf it’s not torture, then it’d be ok to do to the chymp after his conviction at the Hague, right?
May 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pmI want to stop being sick at the things MY government does. Please, please, make it all stop!
May 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pmThis ” LoopHole” was first revealed by the Ating head of the OLC Bradbury in a hearing a few months ago. He tried to make the same type of distinction but Sen. Whitehouse and others made a mockery of his stance.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pmI hate these evil bastards. God, I hate them for this.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pmShayne Says:
Yeah, water treatment sounds like way more “fun” than waterboarding.
Think of it as “moisturizing” your lungs.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pmIf it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
May 21st, 2008 at 4:16 pmThese are the people who couldn’t stop there incessant attacks on Clinton for verbal obfuscation. These are the people who were going to bring honor and dignity back to the White House. These are the God Fearing Christians who are going to get this country back on track. What mean and petty things we do in the name of God.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:22 pmImpeach Cheney and Bush and Save the Constitution.
Abu Ben Hussein Leporello.
Vice President Cheney informed us of this “loophole” in October 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700560.html
May 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pmArt Says:
If it walks like a duck,
You would too, if they did this to you:
Khreisan Khalis Aballey, aged 39, was arrested at his home in Baghdad on 30 April 2003 with his 80-year-old father. Coalition forces were apparently looking for ‘Izzat al-Duri, a senior member of the Ba’ath Party. Khreisan Aballey insisted that he had no knowledge of his whereabouts. During his interrogation at Baghdad’s airport detention facility, he was made to stand or kneel facing a wall for seven-and-a-half days, hooded, and handcuffed tightly with plastic strips. At the same time a bright light was placed next to his hood whilst distorted music was played. Throughout this period he was deprived of sleep and fell unconscious some of the time. He reported that at one time a US soldier stamped on his foot, tearing off one of his toenails. The prolonged kneeling made his knees bloody, so he mostly stood; when, after seven-and-a-half days he was told he was to be released and that he could sit, one of his legs was the size of a football. He continued to be held for two more days, apparently to allow his health to improve, and was released on 9 May 2003.
Link
May 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pmI swear to God these guys could lock a guy naked in a freezer overnight, pull him out and drop him into a pit of fire and they’d call it “Natural Temperature Realignment”.
This government is such a world-wide embarrassment I wish I could fast forward to next January……
May 21st, 2008 at 4:28 pmAnd rehydrating your esophagus. Do you have to leave a tip?
May 21st, 2008 at 4:33 pmThere’s only one way to convince Bushco that these tactic are torture … which one should go first, Cheney?
May 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pmMight as well call it water nourishment or watersports…
May 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pmit’s still torture…
May 21st, 2008 at 4:38 pmFellow bloggers made a little bit of fun of me when I pointed out how the administration had been playing these word games all along — it was the story about Iran “acquiring” a nuke as opposed to “acquiring the knowledge” to build a bomb. Bush and his cronies changed their tune before they finally released the Iran NIE last year that disputed that they have WMD technology. Subtle? Yeah. They play games like this because they think we are too stupid to tell the difference. Sometimes we notice and sometimes we don’t. Don’t believe any words they speak!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 4:41 pmThey have tortured, only to obfuscate via semantics. What they have not done is have these people CONVICTED yet.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:47 pmToday, it has been reported that Lebanon has allowed Hezbollah to be part of their government. Additionally, Pakistan and the Taliban have forged an alliance. This eems to indicate a repudiation of the Bush WH foreign policy. Clearly, we are not safer than we were seven years ago.
Meanwhile, the only parties who have benefitted from this fiasco are his buddies in the energy industry. Remember the energy meeting in 2000 with Cheney, Enron, and the oil companies? Perhaps there was another meeting in the last few months, right around the time of the famous press conference where Bush said he did not know anything about $4 per gallon gas, but he was studying oil industry pricing.
Though profiteering was a war crime.
This is not a dictatorship – this is a managed democracy. Your phones, e-mail, mail and internet activities are not being monitored – the government is merely inventorying potential terrorist activities. Habeas corpus has not been suspended – preventive detention under appropriate security has been implemented.
You get the idea.
There is no difference between water boarding, water cure, water treatment and other similar torture techniques. Each was based upon drowning the person to force a confession. Yes, drowning – it does not matter whether you dunk, use a towel or force someone to inhale. It is depriving someone of the ability to breathe by use of water. No one actually dies of drowning. Read an autopsy report. It is suffocation. Water boarding is merely a technique. I should know, I used to be a prosecutor.
The Republicans want to play the cute, Orwellian word game. We need to stop them. I believe that an appropriate means of doing this would be to have a live televised demonstration of the technique done to a volunteer using both the cloth and submersion technique and them have them describe it. I would suggest that we simply take a Republican senator and do it to him. Any Republican senator that has supported these stupid word games has “volunteered.” The end of the demonstration would be a signed confession that the techniques were indeed torture.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:50 pmShayne Says:
And rehydrating your esophagus. Do you have to leave a tip?
Yes. But, the tip of what, you don’t want to know.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:53 pmRep Rohrabacher born June 21 1947, Guess which branch of the military he served in, and how long he served in Vietnam?
May 21st, 2008 at 4:53 pmCall it whatever name they want, it does not change what they are: WAR CRIMINALS! THE USA IS A TERRORIST STATE UNDER THIS CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION. THEY HAVE COMMITED CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND WAR CRIMES! THEY SHOULD RECEIVE THE SAME TREATMENT OF THOSE OF THE NUREMBERG TRIALS. NOT MORE, NOT LESS.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pmricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .ricemustgo.com .
May 21st, 2008 at 5:08 pmWe have seen the failure of our executive, judicial and legislative systems to deal with this issue. Perhaps it is just time for the people to pick out the worst offenders and their supporters and just do what needs to be done.
Just think of how many lives and how much suffering would have been avoided had Hitler been taken care of in this manner.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pmBush has a much larger legal team in the Whitehouse than Clinton ever had. When you have that many people with idle time on their hands they can dream up some inventive ways to circumvent the law. This is the fruit the American people get for their tax dollars.
Did anybody ask what the Army Field Manual says on such treatment? Somehow I don’t think simulated drowning is in that manual.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:22 pmSo the Bush administration is dissembling again? I’m shocked, I tell you…shocked!
NOT.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:29 pmIt adds new meaning to the words, “Hey, Culligan Man!” I take it that’s CullIgAn man.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:14 pmA water board is a six foot oval shaped device with fins on which you can ride the waves.
What they’re discussing is called:
DROWNING TORTURE
It’s a felony, with a 20 year max., or a death sentence if the victim dies. This is federal law under the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act.
Toss the term “waterboarding.” This aint’ about surfing.
Replace it with “drowning torture.”
The Crimes of the State Blog
May 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pmhttp://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/
So glad we cleared that up!!!!!!!!!!
How ’bout we just call it “Slip ‘n’ Slide?”
Can we just all please fast forward to January 20th, the day we will all be freed from these sadists?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:55 pm.
ONCE A TORTURER… ALWAYS A TORTURER!
A rose(water treatment) by any other name is still a rose(TORTURE) just the same.
.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:50 amAs I stated in the Chinese partnership in torture, you can try to disguise it with fancy names, but it’s exactly as the torture by “rogue states” with a dismal record of torture in the UN’s and other Human Rights Violator’s listings:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/21/abc-us-personnel-at-gitmo-did-dirty-work-for-chinese-interrogators/#comment-4973372
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 amClinton has taken Kentucky and Obama is right there in Oregon.
The Democratic race for nomination is still very much alive – and most likely to be decided by superdelegates – as CNN points out clearly
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/20/primary.wrap/index.html
If you’re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven’t done so yet, please write a message to each of your state’s superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
Obama Supporters:
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It’s that easy…
Clinton Supporters too …. !
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?! Those are really worth !
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It’s that easy…
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 am“I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Wait … what’s the definition of sexual relations? Oh … yah, yah .. we did some of that.” :-)
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 amSo basically, the opinion of Republicans about the GOP VERY DELIBERATE scheme to torture is “Clinton did play with words too, to evade a probe about a fellation”. Nice defense. I wonder why the Nuremberg judges weren’t more interested in the sexual life of the Kaiser than judging the torturing and killing methods of the nazis under Hitler’s orders.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 amThis is first time on this site, and posting this may not come off well, since more proof of impeachable offenses is hardly needed; plus it`ll seem like a sales pitch. But I inadvertently signed up for e-mail notices from a netroots group, AskNadler2Impeach, whose aim, clearly is to either convince House Judiciary Member, Dem. Jerry Nadler to move on impeachment hearings or successfully challenge him in June via their recent Primary Challenger sign-up, George Spitz, an elderly anti-war activist, georgespitz.com
I was e-mailed the above link by the group, and it was suggested the House Judiciary Commitee, mainly John Conyers, Jr. or others be relayed that as more proof. The FBI created a “war crimes file” to record any abuses by military interrogators and other agaencies but then “someone” told them to shut up. If the FBI is not insured against political intimidation, and can be successfully forced into submmission, everyone is in big trouble, though that concept in no way supercedes any of this.
And for those who, with a straight face insist impeachment is a non-concern, I also learned from them that Nadler seems to be also “morally confused” about SSI insurance – in a chain letter I was forwarded, I learned, part of his platform for the 8th District, is, or until recently was, to have it put into the stock market.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 pmWe live in a representative Democracy.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 pmWe allowed the Iraq invasion to take place.
Why then should we be surprised when an evil act
results in more evil.