Along with President Trump, I too would
like to see waterboarding return as a tool for getting information from
captured enemies. My support for this comes from my personal experience of
being waterboarded while I was in the Marine Corps.
I’m a former Marine Corps helo pilot and
attended what was the last SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape)
training course located near Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North
Carolina. During my training I was captured by the “enemy” and waterboarded.
My waterboarding did not occur in some medically safe,
hermetically purified room, designed for that purpose with a few doctors and
medics standing nearby to render immediate assistance. That’s what I saw a few
times on TV way back when Senator McCain called it "torture". I was
taken, blindfolded via my poncho that the instructors put on backwards with the
hood tied tightly closed, to someplace in the training area (which at that time
was located in a big square, framed by four small state highways and county
roads and not on base). There, I was forced to the
ground and, face up, tied spread eagle to stakes.
Now, let me back up for a second and
explain to you naysayers and civilians that when the Marine Corps creates a
training environment, it is intentionally designed in such a way that you are not predisposed to think, “Hey, this is
just training so anything that happens, I know is just fake.”
While I was spread-eagled, able to see
nothing, the instructor came over to ask me questions to test my resistance to
answering. I refused to answer a question about my unit just as I was told to
do earlier that week during the classroom phase of training. Suddenly, he
loosened my poncho hood, pulled it down so I could see, then quickly put some
kind of towel or cloth over my face and the towel or cloth was held tight to
the ground on either side of my head making it impossible to move my head side
to side. I was shocked about the towel and at that time had no idea what was
about to happen next. He poured water on the towel where my nose and mouth were
located and I literally could not breathe, as if I were drowning and could do
absolutely nothing about it.
Now, I don’t know much about how the human
brain functions, but all thought left mine except abject, animal fear and
knowing, absolutely knowing I was going to die right then, period. There was
no, “Okay, this will end in a few seconds and I’ll be fine,” or “Come on Ken, you’re a Marine,
take this,” or “This is just a training exercise and it’s not real so
calm down.” None of that. And I would suspect that it’s the same for
anyone else who’s been waterboarded. Sorry Marine Corps, but I failed to
resist, because when the instructor finally stopped after what seemed like
years, and asked me the question again, I told him the answer, the right answer because I never wanted to experience again what had
just happened.
Yes, I felt the shame and remorse later,
feeling that I turned into a little two-year-old girl in a pink tutu after I
was waterboarded. But there was a lot more training to go, and in order to pass
the course (and never retake SERE school again), I had to
start over from the beginning of the field course and go all that night and the
next day to get to the checkpoint by 1500 (3 p.m.) or fail the course. Me and
my SERE school partner, who I assumed was also spread-eagled nearby when we
both were captured, made it by the skin of our teeth but we both passed.
Okay, so what’s the bottom line? In my
humble opinion, waterboarding is not torture. It is an effective technique,
albeit an extremely terrifying and dehumanizing technique, that will make
anyone sing the truth like a canary. Torture, to me is something permanent,
like cutting off fingers or dislocating and relocating body joints over and
over inducing extreme pain, giving one a disability for life. Torture is being
forced to watch your son or daughter get beheaded or watch your daughter get
beaten or stoned to death because she was raped by seven males; or watching
your only son get burned alive on the nightly news after he was captured. That, to me, is torture and I
am very against it, whether it works or not. I’m sure President Trump is
against that as well. Plus, I have serious doubt that any enemy can train
themselves enough to take a session of waterboarding in order to keep mum.
And those who disagree and think
waterboarding is torture because Doctor So-and-So, or
Special Ops Colonel So-and-So, or Senator McCain says it is, fine. My opinion
is based on my own experience. I believe waterboarding ought to be used to get
real time information from an enemy in order to save the lives of those in
harm’s way, period.
Not that it’s going to make a difference
to policy, but based on my own experience, that’s my two cents.
