“Waterboarding is torture, period.”

Big ups to former Navy interrogator Malcolm Nance, who testified in front of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, and emphatically declared that waterboarding is indeed torture.

Picture courtesy of http://www.intelligencesummit.org/speakers/MalcolmNance.php

As if we need someone to sit in front of our public servants to tell them that strapping someone to a inclined board, wrapping a cloth around the head, and pouring water over the mouth and nose to induce the beginning stages of drowning is cruel and unusual.

While Attorney General nominee Mukasey dodges questions and invokes the most innocuous euphemisms (a la this Administrations claim that waterboarding is an “enhanced interrogation technique”), a large majority of Americans believe that waterboarding is torture. To no surprise, today’s Judiciary Committee hearing was not call-and-response; the Bush Administration didn’t allow its designated whipping boy to testify on the supposed merits of waterboarding and other forms of their, um, “enhanced” techniques.

Nance’s testimony was frightening, especially his description of the process of waterboarding: “water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel(ing) your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs.”