Waterbording & torture Essay Example for Free

Waterbording torture Essay Waterbording is definitely torture. There is absolutely no way around this issue, it is torture pure and simple. Waterbording is slow suffocation, with water being poured over you gag reflex. It is in effect, controlled drowning. Waterbording is not a stimulation of drowning; it is the real thing, where the victim feels like they are drowning. Depending on the desired result, it will be dictated by the torture how long the victim is to be drowned. I do not believe that waterboarding is an effective tool for interrogation. When a person is being tortured they are liable to say and do anything, just for the torture to stop. Take for instance the story of the sixty year old man, who was tortured using the waterboarding technique. He told his captors everything what they wanted, to hear, but in reality he was none of these things, just a simple school teacher, who’s only crime was that he once spoke French. But even though he told them some truth, they did not stop, but continued to torture him. This is because many of the torturers take a certain sadistic pleasure in torturing their victims even more. This just goes to show that waterboarding as an effective torture tool is useless, because you cannot be really sure if the person is telling the truth, unless you personally check it out. The victims have no choice but to cooperate with this form of torture. Because America has supported the use of waterboarding techniques, you can be sure that whenever Americans are captured and taken prisoners, they will be treated no differently and subjected to waterboarding torture as well. Waterboarding is a war crime and should be treated as such by people all over the world. Source: Nance, Malcom. Waterbording is torture Period. Small Wars Journal (2007): 1-7. 4 Apr. 2008 www. smallwarsjournal. com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding- is- torture- perio.