A Fox News reporter who's had himself waterboarded says it's "a pretty efficient way to get someone to talk and still have them alive and healthy within minutes." Healthy on the outside, that is. Psychologists say to watch out for long-term damage, evidenced by, e.g., screaming at showers. Media Matters has the story, with video.
[Update, 11/8: Keith DeRose points out some serious flaws in the Media Matters' story:
First, in the first paragraph, there's this:
Harrigan stated that his report on waterboarding was meant to show viewers "what exactly it is," whether it is "torture," and if "the U.S. [should] use it."
He did say he wanted to show exactly what waterboarding is, but the rest of the characterization is exactly wrong. Harrigan explicitly says that he's setting aside questions about whether it's torture and whether we should use it (this on the video on the media matters page). (Incidentally, in a talk with someone else at Fox News, when asked whether waterboarding was torture, he responded positively in a very strong way: "I can't see how you could call it anything else. I mean, it's torturous.")
[Gee, a dunk in the water can get even Fox News to sing like a canary.--ed.]
Then there's this:
Harrigan alternated between claiming that the waterboarding was "really scary" and not "that bad" while being subjected to the different "phase[s]."
Well, maybe, but it makes Harrigan sound undecided -- "alternated between." He didn't go back and forth. He said "phase 1" was not that bad, but stage 3 was really scary. So, at least I'd say this is a bit slanted.
Finally, I don't think the page is right in setting up this opposition:
Reflecting on his experience, Harrigan remarked, "[Y]ou really learn you can crack pretty quickly. ... I mean, they took me to the brink, where I was ready to submit, tell them anything within minutes, and then, just minutes later, I was standing by the side of that pool feeling fine." Harrigan concluded that "as far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me, this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then still have them alive and healthy within minutes." However, psychologists, such as Dr. Allen S. Keller, director of the Bellevue Hospital Center/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture reportedly disagreed: According to The New Yorker magazine, Keller asserted that "such forms of near-asphyxiation," like waterboarding, could indeed lead to long-term psychological damage:
Harrigan is careful to say "at least in this controlled experiment." Maybe he should have done more to emphasize that important point, but he did at least make it. In particular, one important control was this: Harrigan could just squeeze the hands of his torturers, and they'd immediately stop, and you see that he only lasted a couple of seconds in phase 3, and he knew they weren't going to hurt him. That that could leave him alive and healthy within minutes is perfectly consistent with waterboarding under other, less-friendly conditions leaving long-term problems. Here, some of the blame may be Harrigan's, because, despite his "at least..." clarification, he may have left a misleading impression. But, in any case, there is also a problem with the media matters site, in assuming there's a real difference between what Harrigan said and what their psychologists say.]
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