OK, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I’m really worried about Congress and the Presidents Cabinet. The difficulty is that these highly educated, well read, worldly ‘leaders’ of our nation seem all to be afflicted with missing neurons or early Alzheimer’s.

I’m talking about the big question that nobody seems to be able to make a firm answer to – Is waterboarding torture? Pardon me?

The first historical notes about waterboarding in the Western world were in the Medieval torture chambers and inquisitions, calling it tortua del agua. The Spanish inquisition in the 15th century was created to stop the advance of heresy so maybe there is an obvious direct line to the present administration in Washington – anything other than what we believe is heresy. This inquisition started in 1481 and didn’t officially end until 1834 so when the Mr. Bush said that the War on Terror (perpetual war) would last beyond our lifetimes, he has historical continuity.

The Dutch East India Company used it during the Amboyna Massacre in 1621. In 1901, the United States had taken a similar stand against water boarding during the Spanish-American War when an Army major was court-martialed and relieved of command for water boarding an insurgent in the Philippines

Both The Nazi’s and the Japanese used it on American troops during World War II. We sent at least one Japanese torturer to prison for 15 years at hard labor as a war criminal for using it in 1947.

The French water-boarded during the Algerian War. In Viet Nam, in 1968, a photograph of three U.S. soldiers water boarding a North Vietnamese POW appeared in the Washington Post where it was described as ‘fairly common’. At least one of the soldiers was court-martialed within months.

The Khmer Rouge used water boarding as torture in their prisons between 1975 and 1979.

In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

In its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. Department of State formally recognized "submersion of the head in water" as torture in its examination of Tunisia's poor human rights record. U.S. Department of State (2005). "Tunisia". Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

Variations of water boarding have their patriotic histories too. In the Salem Witch trials, one technique was to put a suspected witch in the lake – if they floated, they were considered guilty. I can see why George would get behind this – its simple and the result is clear.

Meanwhile, United Nations Convention Against Torture is against it as is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which the U.S. is a signatory.

So, what exactly did GWB study at Yale? It if was history, he certainly didn’t pay much attention. At the same time he claims pride in America, he associates himself by his actions with the inquisitions, Nazi’s, the wartime Japanese & the Khmer Rouge.

And, of course, he is followed by Cheney, Mukasey and Rush Limbaugh – who I personally thing maybe should be water boarded on National TV with email votes as to when to stop.

Then there is the fiction that we have only water-boarded 3 people as reported by the Wall Street Journal on 11/5/07. If this is true, and we just heard about two cases in the news this week, are you telling me that hearing about it in the news for the past 4 years is about two or three people? Abu Ghraib comes to mind.

That it is an effective torture is undoubted, considering its consistent use for 500 years. That it is efficient seems to be true in that it is reported to only take seconds to minutes. Is it humane, perhaps as it leaves no bruises. Is it safe – well, maybe not as there is also a long history of deaths from suffocation, broken bones from struggling and long-term impairment from the experience.

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