I had forgotten until someone reminded me that Christopher Hitchens voluntarily subjected himself to waterboarding and concluded that it was torture. Now Sean Hannity has volunteered to undergo waterboarding and donate the money he gets for it to our troops. I don’t know who is going to pay him money, nor do I think that the troops will accept his donation. In fact, I don’t even believe Sean Hannity will follow through with his vow.
But if Sean Hannity does follow through with his vow, this is what he can expect.
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. 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. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. 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. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
Hitchens was so embarrassed by how quickly he folded that he collected himself and went for a second application.
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. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass.
Now imagine that there are no preassigned signals you can make to stop the terror? Imagine that you are subjected to this procedure six times a day for a month. Imagine that the procedure lasts for ten, twenty, even forty minutes at a time. And, finally, imagine that the people doing this to you are constantly yelling at you to admit that you have connections to Saddam Hussein!!
