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Waterboarding: A rose by any other name?

A U.S. soldier in Vietnam holds down a Vietcong suspect as an interpreter pours water on his face. (Bettmann/Corbis)

As far I as I can tell, the first time the word “waterboarding” was used in a major American newspaper was in the Sunday Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2005. It was not the first time I had heard of the practice, however – even though I didn't know it till I saw the practice demonstrated on television about a year ago.

About 40 years earlier, a recently-returned Vietnam veteran, then a colleague of mine at a suburban weekly newspaper near Chicago, described to me his own experience with the “water cure,” as he had practiced it in Vietnam.

An Army intelligence officer – and a damned good newspaperman, he wasn't bragging. (In fact, Viet vets I knew in those days rarely talked about their experiences at all.) “They (the Vietcong) did it to us,” he told me. “We just did it back to them.” I believed him.

The picture at the top of this column, first printed on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post on Jan. 21, 1968, pretty much illustrates his story.

The caption under the photo, credited to United Press International, reads, in full:

A U.S. soldier and South Vietnamese interpreter hold down a Vietcong suspect during questioning as another interpreter pours water on a towel covering his face. This induces a fleeting sense of suffocation and drowning meant to make him talk. The incident occurred near DaNang Jan. 17.

Inside, there are more UPI pictures and more details:

A patrol of the 1st U.S. Calvary Division (Airmobile) flushed a Vietcong suspect from a bunker during Operation Wheeler/Wallowa about 25 miles south of the seaport of DaNang Wednesday. The troopers, convinced they had received sniper fire from the man's position, promptly began questioning him. As the interrogation got underway, the suspect, clad in black pajamas typical of the Vietnamese peasant and the Vietcong, knelt and clasped his hands. A South Vietnamese interpreter, apparently not satisfied with the answers he was getting, prodded the man with his boot, pushing him to the ground. Next (see photo at top of this column), an American soldier knelt on the suspect while an interpreter held a towel over his face. A second South Vietnamese poured water on it. This induces a fleeting sense of suffocation and drowning which is calculated to make a suspect talk. In this case it worked, and the man admitted his complicity with the Communists. Later, his hair still damp from the water treatment, he held his chin in his hands and contemplated his fate. He was take away, presumably to a prison stockade. The water technique is said to be in fairly common use among allied troops in Vietnam. Those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury.

Barack Obama was six years old when this incident took place. George W. Bush was as far away from Vietnam as his daddy could keep him. I am sure that neither future-president knew that waterboarding (by any name) was "said to be in fairly common use among allied troops in Vietnam."

But, in a way, all of us who were of age during the Vietnam Era were there... or were close to someone who was. We should have learned more than we did from that war. We should have learned that torturing doesn't work... or, at least, it doesn't win wars.

There are reports (which I have been unable to confirm) that the American soldier in the front page picture was court martialled and convicted for what he did on Jan. 17, 1968. If he wasn't, he should have been. So should have my newspaper colleague.

There are always excuses for using torture. Every war is different. Every conflict gives Americans new reasons for acting like we know we shouldn't.

I found this 40-year-old Vietnam War picture buried in a newspaper archives. Where are we going to bury our sins from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

For more info:
What is waterboarding?
This is what waterboarding looks like
The tortured history of waterboarding
The long debate over waterboarding
Waterboarding coverage on Examiner.Com
Barack Obama and me

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