My brother and I just waterboarded each other... yup, it's torture.. [View All]

I was thinking about the AG confirmation and how Mukasey isn't certain that waterboarding constitutes torture. And then I started thinking about how Rudy Giuliani doesn't believe waterboarding is torture either.

So I figured I'd find out for myself. I mean if it isn't torture, it can't be that bad, right?

Let me tell you this, it's not pleasant. And we were operating under circumstances where we absolutely knew that the other person wasn't going to kill us with the technique.

I was wiped out after four tries. My best time was 20 seconds, and I literally gritted it out. It took about all I had, so much so that right afterward on my last try I barely lasted 9 seconds.

My brother tried it a few more times than I did. He beat me on average times, but his highest was 18 seconds.

I would say that if somebody was repeatedly waterboarded it would not take a whole helluva lot to break them. Immediately a person feels panicked, and that's without the additional fear of thinking that their captors are actually trying to murder them. It's a pretty harrowing ordeal for the time that you are being subjected to it.

It's definitely torture. And if anybody doesn't believe it, then they should try it themselves. According to an ABC news report CIA officers who subject themselves to it only last an average of 14 seconds. And those are people who are trained to withstand different types of torture.

Why is is so difficult? Well, immediately you start to gag on water. Plus you have cellophane over your face, blocking your nose, so you can't breathe well anyway, and then water is rushing over your face and into your mouth. Within seconds you're gagging and spitting and struggling. It seems like an eternity. The first time I did it, I was not prepared at all. I lasted nine seconds and that seem like quite a bit of time. The time I lasted 20 was part luck. I somehow was able to spit the water out enough so that I wasn't gagging too much. Then I just held my breath and tried to gut it out for a few seconds.

But as I said earlier, that 20 seconds wiped me out. The next time out, I was pretty weakened.

So I could see after several times how somebody would spill their guts about anything just to make it stop.

And I could also see how it would be dangerous to someone who was already in poor health. If a person with a heart condition was waterboarded several times, it wouldn't surprise me if it instigated a heart attack or something.

So yeah, it's torture. And if Rudy or Dick Cheney or anybody else doesn't think it is, well, I'd like to see how they would react if they had it done to them.