Oh, Lookie… Andrew ‘Dipshit’ Richardson is Lying Again!

Another post from Andrew ‘Dipshit’ Richardson brings us another lie from that man-shaped black hole of mendacity:

Water-boarding is not harmful. No harm comes to the individual.

This wingnut horseshit has long been discredited, so it is no surprise to find Andy the Dipshit parroting it. Waterboarding can indeed cause physical injury or death. In testimony before the Senate last year, Allen S. Keller, M.D., director of the Bellevue Hospital Center/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, stated:

As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia, rapid heart beat and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water.

Malcolm Nance is a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, and he also testified before Congress last year on this topic. He had this to say:.

…I know the waterboard personally and intimately. Our staff was required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception.

I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim.

Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique – without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it.

In the media, waterboarding is called “simulated drowning,” but that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia – meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.

Waterboarding forces water into the lungs of the victim, which can easily lead to pneumonia. But Andrew ‘Dipshit’ Richardson, being a complete moral incompetent, does not consider the deliberate infliction of a disease on a human being to be “physical injury”. His views are typical of that pathetic class of citizens known as moron-Americans.

UPDATE 03/05/08 6:11 PM EST: Here are a few more facts about waterboarding that will no doubt bounce off Andy the Dipshit’s misshapen skull:

The instinctual violent choking in victims of waterboarding causes throat spasms that can damage the esophagus, larynx, and lungs, says Nathaniel Raymond of the Physicians for Human Rights’ Campaign Against Torture. Oxygen deprivation can lead to myocardial infarction and possibly death, he adds.

Rejali says although waterboarding only simulates the sense of drowning, the victim will in fact die if the procedure is not stopped in time.

Additional respiratory tissue damage occurs when water enters the lungs, a condition that can lead to infection as well as pulmonary edema.

The binding of limbs to keep victims restrained can cause deep vein thrombosis, Raymond says. Victims can injure their chests, arms, and legs if they struggle against the straps.

The ingestion of large amounts of water into the intestines causes the organs to stretch and convulse causing severe pain, says Rejali.

When the physical stress of suffocation and the fear of death are combined, the result is psychological trauma on par with that of extreme physical torture, says Miles. Research, he says, has demonstrated that the likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder after undergoing psychological torture is the same as if one had undergone physical torture. Victims can develop PTSD and anxiety disorders, become hypervigilant, experience emotional numbing, have flashbacks of being drowned, and develop panic attacks, Miles says.

Remember, kids: In the topsy-turvy, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land that Andrew ‘Dipshit’ Richardson inhabits, a torture technique that can kill the victim is one that does “no harm”.