Waterboarding: New American torture technique, or old Middle East custom?

 Hmm, let's see what we have here. A catalogue of torture techniques?  Detailing what goes on in the mokhabarat dungeons of the Middle East? This sounds like the police state horror show documented every year by the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices compiled by the U.S. State Department. 

 No, this isn't about what's happening in Syria, or Egypt. Regrettably, it's about us. These techniques are described in "Top Secret" Justice Department memos, released by the Obama administration, dealing with the Bush administration's handling of al-Qaeda suspects. Obama officials assail some of the actions as torture and the president ordered the closure of the secret CIA-run prisons where the techniques were used.

 There's "walling," where the interrogator slams the detainee against a wall to "shock and surprise the individual."

 The "facial slap" involves putting the suspect's head in a hold to keep it immobile. While the interrogator cradles the suspect's cheek with one hand, he slaps the other cheek "to induce shock, surprise and/or humiliation."

 There's the "confinement box," where the suspect is incarcerated in a container, sometimes so small that he can not stand up in it, with an insect added to stir up the suspect's entomophobia.

 There are many others, but the most notorious is the "waterboard," a technique to simulate drowning. "In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers and mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20-40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon monoxide level in the individual's blood.This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of 'suffocation and incipient panic,' i.e., the perception of drowning... The procedure may then be repeated."

 Indeed, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo, the CIA interrogators did indeed repeat the technique--183 times against alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and 83 times against a lower-level al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Zubaydah. 

 That begs the question of not only whether the technique constitutes torture, but whether the seeming senseless repetition does so as well. This all the more disturbing in light of reports that the waterboarding treatment was ordered by senior CIA officials even as CIA interrogators in the field believed in one case that the suspect had provided all the information he had and--after the waterboading--provided nothing more of significant value.

 After 9/11, the Bush administration swaggered into the Middle East to teach the folks a thing or two about American values. Reigning Arab despots, who helped write the book on torture, are having a good laugh. Everyone else, though, is weeping.  

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo