How does waterboarding feel

This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy or otherwise of those who are applying the pressure. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added.

In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face.

Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. By the way, this story is not confirmed. My North Carolina friends jeered at it.

Well, O. There was a paramedic present who checked my racing pulse and warned me about adrenaline rush. An interval was ordered, and then I felt the mask come down again. Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex.

The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. No doubt this will pass. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word.

So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements.

Maybe I am being premature in phrasing it thus. I have had some extremely serious conversations on the topic, with two groups of highly decent and serious men, and I think that both cases have to be stated at their strongest. The team who agreed to give me a hard time in the woods of North Carolina belong to a highly honorable group. Haspel, the current acting director of the CIA, has never publicly atoned for her involvement in the now-defunct interrogation operation and the subsequent cover-up.

When Haspel appears before the Senate committee for her confirmation hearing, lawmakers will not just be evaluating her record. They will be deciding whether overseeing torture is disqualifying. The military quietly banned the use of waterboarding in training in because it was too brutal, HuffPost reported in March.

The people interviewed by HuffPost were waterboarded once, and they knew it was a controlled procedure. Now 72, Wolske says he still thinks about the experience. The whole process is introduced and taught as an element of torture. And that it is. It only takes a few minutes. It is that intense and that real. They begin pouring water on your face. In that flash of a moment, you recognize that the only thing that really matters in life is oxygen. Likewise for Gina Haspel. I was on edge. It was to give you a feeling and understanding to know what it was like, what you might be able to expect if you were to be captured.

They would ask questions … you were to try to not answer them if you felt you could. I got to the point where I was just throwing people off of me and I ran out of the tent at the time. So I was finally subdued and put in a hot box. I would say military people need to have some types of experience to understand what could come. An outspoken critic of the use of torture, Nance testified in about the experience of being waterboarded before a congressional panel and the U.

Helsinki Commission. Here are excerpts from his testimonies:. Waterboarding, a simulated drowning, was one of them. To employ the method, a prisoner would be strapped to a board placed on a modified gurney, tipped so that his head was near the ground. Under President George W. Bush, the Justice Department approved and issued guidelines for how to execute the method.

The water pour could last up to 20 seconds, then be paused, then another 20 seconds, paused, then 40 seconds. The subject feels as though he is drowning.

Typically, the subject spasms, expels water and snot, , sometimes vomit, squirms and flops on the gurney as if having a seizure. The practice is nearly universally condemned as torture. Mitchell used the technique on at least three men, including Mohammed. This week, he testified that he would do it again if he believed he had to, but also said that the results repulsed him. He was waterboarded 83 times over a handful of sessions in August , according to an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

After Abu Zubaydah started cooperating with interrogators at a secret prison in Thailand in , Mitchell and Jessen sought to stop using the waterboard. Officers at CIA headquarters in Virginia accused the two of having lost their nerve. The psychologists performed what Mitchell said was a dialed-back version of the technique. His description of himself as playing a role to limit the use of the program is confounding, especially because he went on to waterboard two more men, including Mohammed, who was waterboarded times.

He testified that waterboarding was a step in a process; he urged the end of it for Abu Zubaydah because it had served its purpose. Abu Zubaydah was cooperating, he said, and might cease to cooperate if it were resumed. He later attempted to stop what he regarded as rogue interrogation techniques at another so-called black site in Afghanistan, he said.

He confronted an interrogator there and later reported him to CIA headquarters.