Water Cure/ Water Boarding

In last week’s New Yorker Magazine Paul Kramer has a very interesting article on how the use of torture techniques simulating drowning were used by the US military as early on as in the war against The Philippine Republic from 1899-1902. Kramer describes how the method known as “water cure” was used to obtain information from Filipinos siding with the revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo and refers to letters written by American servicemen depicting the use of “water cure”. One such letter reads: “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail”. Other testimonies describe how the water that the victim has inadvertently swallowed is then forcefully squeezed out of him again by pressing a foot against his stomach. The short article is grim reading and a bleak reminder that the current use of water boarding to obtain information is not a new phenomenon. Although the stance towards the use of “water cure” by then President Theodore Roosevelt, according to the article, would appear ambiguous, it may have served as inspiration for the current Bush administration’s utilitarian approach to water boarding. Roosevelt is in the article cited as implying that “the United States was, in fact, dissolving “cruelty” in the form of Aguionaldo’s regime”. “Our armies do more than bring peace, do more than bring order [….] they bring freedom”. Does it sound familiar?

You can read the article here.