Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 10, 2010

Dick Cheney once said that it was a ?no-brainer? to give a terrorist suspect ?a dunk in the water? ? as if this were the extent of the procedure called ?waterboarding.?

fill in words hereInternal Bush administration documents recently released to the public demonstrate that the actual practice was immeasurably more brutal than what Cheney described.

This is not fill in words here?simulated drowning?; it was controlled drowning carried out, in 40-second increments, over two-hour sessions several times a day. A special saline solution was used to prevent a potentially fatal sodium deficiency, and subjects were put on a liquid diet to prevent them from choking to death on their own vomit.

Eventually, some waterboarding victims simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown. Interrogators and attending physicians took care to keep them alive ? not out of concern for their welfare, but in order to prolong the torture.

All of this was indistinguishable from tortures carried out by Cambodian Communists and Japanese militarists. How can any American who loves our country countenance this?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.