It has previously been argued that waterboarding must be okay to do to “terrorists”, since we do it to our own military personnel as part of their training. It’s true that waterboarding is part of military SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training, but the argument that SERE training and actual waterboarding has always seemed false to me. The primary difference is that military personnel have chosen to undergo the training, and are ideologically driven to participate in it. If I push myself to run a marathon, it’s psychologically very different than if a person with a gun forces me to run for 26 miles.
But never mind all that, because it won’t shock you to learn that the waterboarding performed in SERE training and that performed in real life aren’t even remotely similar. According to a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General:
So, let’s just put the “waterboarding is okay because every member of the military goes through it in SERE training” argument to bed, shall we?
#1 by Issa at August 27th, 2009
I either read or heard a guy on the radio talking about how he was tortured as a child. He goes into this big rant about the physical and mental abuses he was subjected to – grueling physical tasks, sleep deprivation, being prevented from eating, random punishments for this or that, etc. At the end, his big punchline was that this was all related to competitive swim training. Obviously, if he was happy to do it as a teen, it can’t be that bad! I was astounded at either the sheer stupidity or the intellectual dishonesty of his rant.