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When the United States military trains soldiers to resist interrogation, it uses a torture technique from the Middle Ages, known as "waterboarding". Its use on terror suspects in secret US prisons around the world has come to symbolise the Bush Administration's no-nonsense enthusiasm for the harshest questioning techniques.
Although waterboarding has been considered torture for over a century and the US military is banned from using it, controversy over its continuing use by the CIA may be about to derail the appointment of President George W. Bush's candidate for US Attorney-General.
Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York and a veteran of several al Qaeda trials, was questioned by a Senate committee on Wednesday and refused to say whether waterboarding was illegal.
Instead, he called the technique "repugnant to me" and promised to investigate further if he was confirmed in the job. He explained that he could not say yet whether the practice was illegal because he had not been briefed on the secret methods of US interrogators and he did not want to put the CIA officers who used it in "personal legal jeopardy".
Although Congress banned waterboarding in the US military in 2005, it did not do so for the CIA. As a result, Mukasey told senators, it was uncertain whether this technique or other harsh methods constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. His answers did not satisfy the Democrats and his approval now hinges on whether he is willing to say the torture method is against US law.
In a further embarrassment for Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an adviser on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice.
He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique - period".
The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as water is forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.
Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject".
"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral."
CIA director Michael Hayden has tried to defuse the controversy. He said that, since 2002, aggressive interrogation methods in which a prisoner believes he is about to die have been used on only about 30 of the 100 al Qaeda suspects being held by the US.
Meanwhile, a CIA official told the New York Times waterboarding had only been used three times. The Bush Administration has suggested that the interrogation of al Qaeda's second-in-command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was a success thanks to the technique, and used this to justify continued aggressive interrogations of suspects in secret CIA prisons.
While US media reports typically state that waterboarding involves "simulated drowning". Nance said there's nothing simulated about it.
"Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death."
Nance said US troops were trained to withstand waterboarding, watched by a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a back-up team.
"When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner - it is torture, without doubt," he said.
"One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American."
Mukasey's nomination goes before the Senate next week. Three Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have already said they will not support him. However, the White House said yesterday that it did not believe his nomination was in jeopardy.
