Logic Tortured

Physicians for Human Rights, which hosted yesterday's breakfast briefing with Human Rights First and Open Society, tried to clear things up.

"By any reasonable standard," said Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue-New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, "waterboarding, or whatever you call it, is clearly torture." Among the possible consequences: heart attacks, asphyxiation and pneumonia.

"Our nation," agreed psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis, a retired Army general, "has regarded waterboarding as torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment since the late 19th century."

Nor did Vann Nath, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng torture chambers, agree with Cheney's view that the technique is a "no-brainer." With a translator, he described it by teleconference from Cambodia: "They would pour the water to the level of the prisoner's head. The prisoner would have been choked, could not breathe."

Alternatively, Nath explained: "The prisoner was tied up both hand and leg and laid on his back on a slanted table. His face was covered by a cloth. . . . The interrogator poured water on the face and the prisoner could not have the chance to breath. They started to get convulsions."

And finally, Nath described: "He would hang upside down into the water tank. When the water was filled up to the nose of the prisoner the prisoner wasn't able to breathe. . . . After the interrogation finished, they were taken away and shot."

Another water-torture survivor, Henri Alleg, called in from France. Alleg has written a book about being tortured by the French in Algeria describing how a wooden wedge was put in his mouth and water poured in. He lost consciousness and one of his interrogators "was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed."

"They went on with electricity, burning with torches of paper, and so on," Alleg explained yesterday. But the waterboarding was bad enough. "For people who have undergone this treatment, the question is how was it possible for it to be used by people who put themselves as a civilized people?" he said.

Sorry, Monsieur Alleg. Only the Grand Inquisitor gets to ask the questions.