Waterboarding is one of those things most of us have an opinion about and few of us know anything about. According to Steve Harrigan who gets waterboarded on Fox (see video), it is scary, causes panic, and is very hard to withstand, but that you fully recover from the experience within just a few minutes. Fox has been showing Harrigan's experience all day and Hot Air has the video.
FNC
Ed. note: Tune in tonight 10pm / 3pm ET as FNC's Steve Harrigan searches for answers on this controversial interrogation technique and undergoes a demonstration.
November 4, 2006
D.C. 9:20 p.m.
There are a lot of questions about waterboarding. First of all, how to spell it — as one word or with a hyphen?
It hit the news this week, but it has been in use since the Middle Ages, through World War II and Vietnam. Yet, despite its history, there are questions about waterboarding — What is it? Is it torture? And is it effective?
Some U.S. personnel have been trained in waterboarding in order to resist it as a form of interrogation. One told me that it is the fear of pain and the fear of drowning that make it more effective than enduring actual pain.
There are reports that waterboarding was used in the interrogation of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. There are reports he held out two and a half minutes. There are reports that two and a half minutes is considered, by some interrogators, to be a remarkable length of time to endure waterboarding. The average endurance during training of interrogators has been reported as just 14 seconds. Of course, waterboarding is a broad term, and there are a range of techniques with varying degrees of intensity. More about those techniques in the days to come.
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