Originally published on the CGS blog on October 1, 2007.
Just thought we’d share this op-ed from our speaking tour of New Mexico:
Thomas Harrison, of Clovis, New Mexico, called it the”water treatment”.
On May 21, 1951, Lieutenant Colonel Harrison’s F-80 was shot down over North Korea. Two years later, Harrison returned home to Clovis a broken man. Harrison recalled:
“After two weeks of talking, they weren?t getting the information they wanted. So one day in November ten of them came into my cell. They used the water treatment. They would bend my head back, put a towel over my face and pour water over the towel. I could not breath. This went on hour after hour, day after day. It was freezing cold. When I would pass out, they would shake me and begin again. They would leave me tied to the chair with the water freezing on and around me.”
Under torture, Harrison signed whatever was put before him. Every man has his breaking point. In a North Korean prison, Harrison had reached his.
Today, the “water treatment” has a different name though the torture is still the same. In 2002, President George W. Bush authorized the CIA to ?water-board? al Qaeda suspects captured during the War on Terror. ABC News reports that 9/11 plotter, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was water-boarded in a secret CIA prison in Poland. KSM was chained to a wooden board, a rag was fixed in his mouth, then cellophane was firmly wrapped over his face. Cold water was then poured over his mouth until he began to gag and lurch. After two and a half minutes, KSM broke. He admitted to an incredulous 31 different plots? nearly every act of terrorism against the United States since the early 1990s.
Link to the rest of the piece here
