"for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up"

Every time I think I have a handle on how awful our treatment of GWOT detainees has been, it turns out to be worse.  Not only was it torture, it was calibrated to take its victims as close to the point of death as could be managed without actually losing them.  (For that matter, we can't verify that they didn't waterboard anyone to death.)  And finally, as the quote in the header says, our torturers apparently found that at least some of their victims considered this regimen so unbearable that death was preferable.

That particular Bradbury memo laid out a precise and disturbing protocol for what went on in each waterboarding session. The CIA used a "specially designed" gurney for waterboarding, Bradbury wrote. After immobilizing a prisoner by strapping him down, interrogators then tilted the gurney to a 10-15 degree downward angle, with the detainee's head at the lower end. They put a black cloth over his face and poured water, or saline, from a height of 6 to 18 inches, documents show. The slant of the gurney helped drive the water more directly into the prisoner's nose and mouth. But the gurney could also be tilted upright quickly, in the event the prisoner stopped breathing.

Detainees would be strapped to the gurney for a two-hour "session." During that session, the continuous flow of water onto a detainee's face was not supposed to exceed 40 seconds during each pour. Interrogators could perform six separate 40-second pours during each session, for a total of four minutes of pouring. Detainees could be subjected to two of those two-hour sessions during a 24-hour period, which adds up to eight minutes of pouring. But the CIA's guidelines say interrogators could pour water over the nose and mouth of a detainee for 12 minutes total during each 24-hour period. The documents do not explain the extra four minutes to get to 12.

Interrogators were instructed to pour the water when a detainee had just exhaled so that he would inhale during the pour. An interrogator was also allowed to force the water down a detainee's mouth and nose using his hands. "The interrogator may cup his hands around the detainee's nose and mouth to dam the runoff," the Bradbury memo notes. "In which case it would not be possible for the detainee to breathe during the application of the water."

"We understand that water may enter – and accumulate in – the detainee's mouth and nasal cavity, preventing him from breathing," the memo admits.

But we've subjected American soldiers to waterboarding, so this is surely no big deal, right?

U.S. soldiers, for example, were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face one time, never more than twice, for about 20 seconds, the CIA admits in its own documents.

And our soldiers were probably not having this comparatively quite mild version of waterboarding administered to them in the midst of week-long sessions of sleep deprivation enforced by being kept in a stress position the whole time, or being slammed against a wall in between waterboarding sessions, or being abused in various other ways:

As brutal as the waterboarding process was, the memos also reveal that the Bush-era Justice Department authorized the CIA to use it in combination with other forms of torture. Specifically, a detainee could be kept awake for more than seven days straight by shackling his hands in a standing position to a bolt in the ceiling so he could never sit down. The agency diapered and hand-fed its detainees during this period before putting them on the waterboard. Another memo from Bradbury, also from 2005, says that in between waterboarding sessions, a detainee could be physically slammed into a wall, crammed into a small box, placed in "stress positions" to increase discomfort and doused with cold water, among other things.

The CIA's waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown. "In our limited experience, extensive sustained use of the waterboard can introduce new risks," the CIA's Office of Medical Services wrote in its 2003 memo. "Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness."

Hell, I'd give up too and seek death's release, rather than face a future of who knows how many repetitions of such agony.

And it's not surprising that victims would give up, given that the process was designed and calibrated to bring the victims of this torture as close to the point of death as possible before resuscitating them.  If you're being forced to go through the agonies of death under torture many times without actually winding up dead, who wouldn't be ready to just take that last step over the line?

Should a prisoner stop breathing during the procedure, the documents instructed interrogators to rapidly tilt the gurney to an upright position to help expel the saline. "If the detainee is not breathing freely after the cloth is removed from his face, he is immediately moved to a vertical position in order to clear the water from his mouth, nose, and nasopharynx," Bradbury wrote. "The gurney used for administering this technique is specially designed so that this can be accomplished very quickly if necessary."

Documents drafted by CIA medical officials in 2003, about a year after the agency started using the waterboard, describe more aggressive procedures to get the water out and the subject breathing. "An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately," the CIA Office of Medical Services ordered in its Sept. 4, 2003, medical guidelines for interrogations. "The interrogator should then deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water." (That's a blow below the sternum, similar to the thrust delivered to a chocking victim in the Heimlich maneuver.)

But even those steps might not force the prisoner to resume breathing. Waterboarding, according to the Bradbury memo, could produce "spasms of the larynx" that might keep a prisoner from breathing "even when the application of water is stopped and the detainee is returned to an upright position." In such cases, Bradbury wrote, "a qualified physician would immediately intervene to address the problem and, if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy." The agency required that "necessary emergency medical equipment" be kept readily available for that procedure. The documents do not say if doctors ever performed a tracheotomy on a prisoner.

The doctors were also present to monitor the detainee "to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress." A leaked 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross says that meant the detainee's finger was fixed with a pulse oxymeter, a device that measures the oxygen saturation level in the blood during the procedure. Doctors like Allen say this would allow interrogators to push a detainee close to death – but help them from crossing the line. "It is measuring in real time the oxygen content in the blood second by second," Allen explained about the pulse oxymeter. "It basically allows them to push these prisoners more to the edge. With that, you can keep going. This is calibration of harm by health professionals."

And let's not forget to treat our quality control process as the groundwork of a system of continu improvements in the art of bringing a captive as close to the point of death as possible:

"NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment."

I've seen a couple of blog posts about this over the past week, but that's been about it, as far as I can tell.  I don't get it: this is the smoking gun.  This wasn't even close to not being torture, and it wasn't just a few 'bad apples' at Bagram or Abu Ghraib.  There was no 'ticking time bomb.'  This was institutionalized, routinized torture.

Even apart from our Administration's legal responsibility to do so, its failure to prosecute the persons responsible for this regime of torture is a moral abomination.  To condone by inaction these things that have been done in our name, now that we are finally finding out something approaching the full truth about those crimes, is nothing short of appalling.

Comments

[minstrel hussain boy]

having been waterboarded in SERE training, which was a punk exercise that accomplished jack fucking shit, i can without reservation state that there simply is no such fucking thing as a "mild" form of it. twenty second limit? i don't know, i wasn't counting. it seemed like forever.

the thing that makes waterboarding so much fun for the sick, twisted cocksuckers who do it to others is that the responses are autonomic. when the mouth and nose are full of water and the flow of air is shut off the body responds with neurotransmitters which induce, against any feeble attempt at something like will or resolve and a person's whole being is slammed straight into absolute and total panic.

my sessions were way the fuck more than twice. me, and the other guys from my unit were going out of our way to piss off the pissants of the opfor. we were aggressivly refusing to "learn the lessons" of how to be good captives and try to not say shit that would make the brass uncomfortable.

my turn on the board only ended because i aspirated enough water (or saline) to make me start puking uncontrollably. while they were trying to keep me from aspirating puke somebody got careless and left one hand free. that hand found its way to the nutsack of the motherfucker who had been the pourer. hilarity ensued.

to this fucking day, if i were to meet any of the SERE instructors on the street sudden and ruthless violence would commence most ricky tick.

[oddjob]

Sully's March 9 post on it.

[Sir Charles]

This is sickening on a profound level. And the clinical detachment of the memo really is Nazi-like.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one of the things that strikes me, is the return of "the banality of evil" that was noticed by the allies after ww2.

many of the most henious of them, like eichmann, were eyeglass wearing little men who looked like they would be librarians or grocery clerks.

the supervillians almost never look the part.

all the best torturers from torquemada on kept carefull records of what worked and what didn't. they would go into great detail over which torture should be applied and for how long.

st. thomas more himself was a great burner and torturer of heretics. he sent pope clement details of a device he had designed for burning heretics. by treating the wooden pole with creosote to inhibit it burning, and by counterbalancing it on a fulcrum, the heretic for burning could be lowered in and out of the flames, prolonging the agony and, according to more, by the suffering of the lingering death, be given a better chance of being forgiven and, after a suitable time in purgatory, be allowed in the presence of the lord.

you see, the torturers always manage to convince themselves that they are "helping." by inflicting the grossest pains, they were really increasing the chances of the soul's forgiveness.

one of the things that absolutely sent patton into a rage when he was liberating a camp was finding that the nazis, even knowing that the war was lost, stepped up the slaughter's pace and were convinced that when the americans saw the good work that they were doing by keeping the world safe from jews and other "untermenschen," we would say "wow, you guys aren't that bad at all...we have this problem with colored people in our country..."

now here we are again. the evil among us are academics like yoo and bybee, although cheney does us the favor of looking like an evil son of a bitch, bush didn't. he looked like a goofy texas boy (by way of andover, yale, and harvard).

[oddjob]

all the best torturers from torquemada on kept carefull records of what worked and what didn't. they would go into great detail over which torture should be applied and for how long.

Sully has observed that the instructions accompanying Rumsfeld's ("the Pentagon's") torture authorization includes a lot of detail about what is permitted and how (never using the word "torture", of course).

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

A friend of mine wrote an honor's thesis about Eichmann entitled "I sat at my desk and did my work" which was an actual quote from Eichmann about his war time activities.

[oddjob]

And of course the shameless continue to double down in their shamelessness.

Sen. Moynihan used to occasionally make disapproving public comments about "defining deviancy down" (with regards to popular culture). I can't even imagine what he would have thought of all this.......

[Joe]

Oddjob, do you have a link to the original memo (as opposed to Salon paraphrasing and quotes) ? Thanks.

[oddjob]

Not off the top of my head. I'm recalling something I've read at Andrew Sullivan's blog, but he hasn't posted on that recently. I've been regularly reading his blog for years and I can recall him mentioning that there's rather a bit of detail in the authorization regarding things such as how many hours interrogators are permitted to force prisoners to stand for, how long they are permitted to put them in stress positions, etc., but this is recall. I'm certain there is at least one such post on Sully's blog in his archives (and I think more than one, frankly), but I can't recall how recently he's posted on that topic.

[kathy a.]

this stuff is horrifying. really horrifying.

and you know what else? it takes far less than torture "simulating" a death experience to coerce someone into falsely confessing, or giving false evidence. people who feel pressured enough will say anything to get out of the coercive situation. the "justification" of obtaining useful evidence is bogus.

[kathy a.]

MHB, there are no words at all to make up for what you went through. and that was just practice, eh? how can that possibly be right, good, ok? it just can't.

[Ian Welsh]

Wonder if it's still going on in Bagram. Who knows...

[oddjob]

Indeed.

One would like to think otherwise, of course, but since no one except whiny liberals (& fussy traditionalists, which is where I would more accurately classify myself) - obviously not the mainline press - appears to give a shit about this...........