An interesting article on the history of this particular torture..

Jon Cloke


Water Boarding in U.S. History

By William Loren Katz
1-06-07
<http://www.hnn.us/articles/44411.html>

Mr. Katz is the author of forty U.S. history books, and
has been affiliated with New York University since 1973.
His website is www.williamlkatz.com. His essay draws
from his The Cruel Years (Beacon Press, 2003) and more
heavily from Stuart Creighton Miller, "Benevolent
Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines,
1899-1903 (Yale University Press, 1982), a moving
account of this country's first major overseas
imperialist venture.

Some high U.S. officials claim not be aware of it, and
Judge Michael Mukasey, the President's choice for
attorney general, prefers to equivocate, but water
boarding has long been a form of torture that causes
excruciating pain and can lead to death. It forces water
into prisoner's lungs, usually over and over again. The
Spanish Inquisition in the late 1400s used this torture
to uncover and punish heretics, and then in the early
1500s Spain's inquisitors carried it overseas to root
out heresy in the New World. It reappeared during the
witch hysteria. Women accused of sorcery were "dunked"
and held under water to see if they were witches.

In World War II Japan and Germany routinely used water
boarding on prisoners. In Viet Nam U.S. forces held
bound Viet Cong captives and "sympathizers" upside down
in barrels of water. Water boarding also has been
associated with the Khmer Rouge.

An extensive record of its use by the United States land
forces exists in the records of the invasion and
occupation of the Philippines that began in 1898. As the
U.S. encountered armed resistance by the liberation army
of Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo, and sank into a
12-year quagmire on the archipelago, U.S. officers
routinely resorted to what they called "the water cure."
Professor Miller's study of the Philippine war reveals
this sordid story through Congressional testimony,
letters from soldiers, court martial hearings, words of
critics and defenders, and newspaper accounts. The pro-
imperialist media of the day justified the "water cure"
as necessary to gain information; the anti-imperialist
media denounced its use by the U.S or any other
civilized nation.

Fresh from their recent victories in the Indian wars,
the Philippine invasion of 1898 began with a war whoop.
U.S. forces landed in the Philippines in 1898 led by
American officers such Pershing, Lawton, Smith, Shafter,
Otis, Merritt, and Chafee, who had fought "treacherous
redskins." At least one officer had taken part in the
infamous 1891 massacre of 350 Lakota men, women and
children at Wounded Knee. A U.S. media that had
supported the Army's brutal Indian campaigns rhapsodized
about this new opportunity for distant racial warfare.
The influential San Francisco Argonaut spoke candidly:
"We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines.
The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately they
are infested with Filipinos. There are many millions
there, and it is to be feared their extinction will be
slow." The paper's solution was to recommend several
unusually cruel methods of torture it believed "would
impress the Malay mind."

President William McKinley dispatched Admiral Dewey to
the Philippines with a pledge to bestow civilization and
Christianity on its people, and promise eventual
independence. Perhaps he was unaware that most Filipinos
were Catholics. Perhaps he did not know that General
Aguinaldo and his 40,000 troops were poised to remove
Spain from the islands. Dewey supplied Aguinaldo with
weapons and encouraged him, but that soon changed.

From the White House and the U.S. high command to field
officers and lowly enlistees the message became "these
people are not civilized" and the United States had
embarked on a glorious overseas adventure against
"savages." Officers and enlisted men - and the media --
were encouraged to see the conflict through a "white
superiority" lens, much as they viewed their victories
over Native Americans and African Americans. The
Philippine occupation unfolded at the high tide of
American segregation, lynching, and a triumphant white
supremacy ideology.

U.S. officers ordered massacres of entire villages and
conducted a host of other shameful atrocities as the
Philippine quagmire dragged on for more than a decade.
"A white man seems to forget that he is human," wrote a
white soldier from the Philippines.

Atrocities abounded. To produce "a demoralized and
obedient population" in Batangas, General Franklin Bell
ordered the destruction of "humans, crops, food stores,
domestic animals, houses and boats." He became known as
the "butcher" of Batangas. General Jacob Smith, who had
been wounded fighting at Wounded Knee, said his overseas
campaigns were "worse than fighting Indians." He
promised to turn Samar province into a "howling
wilderness." Smith defined the enemy as anyone "ten
years and up" and issued these instructions to Marine
Commander Tony Waller: "I want no prisoners. I wish you
to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better
it will please me." He became known as "Howling Jake"
Smith.

The "water cure" was probably first instituted when U.S.
forces encountered local resistance. Professor Miller
states that General Frederick Funston in 1901 may have
used it to capture the Filipino General Emilio
Aguinaldo. A New York World article described the "water
cure" as forcing "water with handfuls of salt thrown in
to make it more efficacious, is forced down the throats
of patients until their bodies become distended to the
point of bursting . . .." This may have been only one on
the versions used.

The water cure became front-page news when William
Howard Taft, appointed U.S. Governor of the Philippines,
testified under oath before Congress and let the cat out
of the bag. The "so called water cure," he admitted, was
used "on some occasions to extract information." The
Arena, an opposition paper, called his words "a most
humiliating admission that should strike horror in the
mind of every American." Around the same time as Taft's
admission a soldier boasted in a letter made public that
he had used the water cure on 160 people and only 26 had
survived. The man was compelled by the War Department to
retract his damaging confession. But then another
officer stated the "water cure" was being widely used
when he reported, "the problem of the 'water cure' is in
knowing how to apply it." Such statements leave unclear
how often the form of torture was used for interrogation
and how often it became a way to exhibit racial
animosity or display contempt.

During a triumphal U.S. speaking tour General Frederick
Funston, bearing a Congressional Medal of Honor and
harboring political ambitions, bellicosely promoted
total war. In Chicago he boasted of sentencing 35
suspects to death without trial and enthusiastically
endorsed torture and civilian massacres. He even
publicly suggested that anti-war protestors be dragged
out of their homes and lynched.

Funston's words met far more applause than criticism. In
San Francisco he suggested that the editor of a noted
anti-imperialist paper "ought to be strung up to the
nearest lamppost." At a banquet in the city he called
Filipinos "unruly savages" and (now) claimed he had
personally killed fifty prisoners without trial. Captain
Edmond Boltwood, an officer under Funston, confirmed
that the general had personally administered the water
cure to captives, and had told his troops "to take no
prisoners."

President Theodore Roosevelt reprimanded Funston and
ordered him to cease his inflammatory rhetoric. Facing a
political challenge from General Nelson Miles based in
the Philippines, TR, who rode into the White House on
his heroic exploits at San Juan Hill, did not intend to
nourish more competition. The President privately
assured a friend the water cure was "an old Filipino
method of mild torture" and claimed when Americans
administered it "no body was seriously damaged." But
publicly TR was silent about the "water cure."

In an article, "The 'Water Cure' from a Missionary Point
of View," Reverend Homer Stunz justified the technique.
It was not torture, he said, since the victim could stop
it any time by revealing what his interrogators wanted
to know. Besides, he insisted, it was only applied to
"spies." The missionary also justified instances of
torture by pointing out that U.S. soldiers "in lonely
and remote bamboo jungles" faced stressful conditions.

Mark Twain, a leading anti-imperialist voice, offered
this view of the water cure:

"Funston's example has bred many imitators, and many
ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of
Filipinos by the awful 'water- cure,' for instance, to
make them confess -- what? Truth? Or lies? How can one
know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable
pain a man confesses anything that is required of him,
true or false, and his evidence is worthless. Yet upon
such evidence American officers have actually -- but you
know about those atrocities which the War Office has
been hiding a year or two...."

U.S. military trials for what are now known as war
crimes all resulted in convictions. Waller was acquitted
because he followed the orders of Smith, and later
retired with two stars. "Howling Jake" Smith was
convicted, but he returned to a tumultuous citizens'
welcome in San Francisco. When the convicted U.S. war
criminals received only slaps-on-the-wrist U.S. prestige
abroad sunk to new lows.

A San Francisco park was named after General Funston. TR
appointed General Bell of Batangas infamy as his chief
of staff. And the President continued to wave the banner
of aggressive imperialism. In 1903 he flagrantly seized
a broad swath of Columbia's Isthmus of Panama so he
could link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans under U.S.
control. This boosted his popularity and splintered the
anti-imperialist movement. TR also worked to undermine
efforts to grant the Philippines independence, which
finally took place after World War II.

TR easily won a return to the White House in 1904, and
in 1908 he chose Taft as his successor. By the time Taft
left the White House in 1913, military resistance in the
Philippines had ended, and so presumably had the "water
cure." TR had become a Mount Rushmore-size American
icon.

The "water cure" was accepted as a necessary
embarrassment in wartime. Appeals to muscular patriotism
had exonerated the "water cure" and reduced a crime of
torture to a misdemeanor. Is the U.S. headed the same
way in 2007?

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