CIA Waterboarding Guidlines

March 9th, 2010

Via: Salon:

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

“This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing,” said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. “The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.’ It just sounds like lunacy,” he said. “This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine.”

These torture guidelines were contained in a ream of internal government documents made public over the past year, including a legal review of Bush-era CIA interrogations by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released late last month.

Research Credit: dilinger

3 Responses to “CIA Waterboarding Guidlines”

  1. dano5050 says:

    I seem to remember a story about how the torture continues at guantanamo despite obama’s supposed orders to the contrary… having trouble remembering where that was…. anyone have pointers?

  2. anothernut says:

    @dano5050: ask and thou shalt receive: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE51O3TB20090225

    (or google “torture guantanamo obama” and look on the second page 😉 )

  3. ronjondoe says:

    what a great product plug for Ensure Plus! A real in-your-face to all those stupid comm’ls w/ Marie Osmond, that football guy, etc., for Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, etc…
    “Used by Water Boarders Everywhere! *picture of emaciated brown-skinned terror devil, maybe with empty sand-bag over head…* “Just look at these results! You too can have that catwalk model body you have always wanted!”
    then some guy talking real fast at the end of the commercial explaining away side effects, results may vary, etc., etc….haha, I should get a job in marketing!

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