How Many Times Were Those Guys Waterboarded?

Cliff May at The Corner has some information about waterboarding you won't hear anywhere else:

A Corner exclusive: How many times have you read and heard in the mainstream media that terrorists were waterboarded more than 180 times?

It turns out that’s not true. What is?

According to two sources, both of them very well-informed and reliable (but preferring to remain anonymous), the 180-plus times refers not to sessions of waterboarding, but to “pours” — that is, to instances of water being poured on the subject.

Under a strict set of rules, every pour of water had to be counted — and the number of pours was limited.

Also: Waterboarding interrogation sessions were permitted on no more than five days within any 30-day period.

No more than two sessions were permitted in any 24-hour period.

A session could last no longer than two hours.

There could be at most six pours of water lasting ten seconds or longer — and never longer than 40 seconds — during any individual session.

Water could be poured on a subject for a combined total of no more than 12 minutes during any 24 hour period.

You do the math.

But two important points:

1) Such detailed rules suggest that serious thought was given to where to draw the line between coercion — “stress and duress” — and torture. You can disagree with where those lines were drawn, but I don’t see how you can say no attempt was made to set limits.

Nor do I see how — except in an Orwellian universe — lawyers from the current administration can prosecute lawyers from the previous administration because they disagree with their legal opinions.

Not only lawyers but also physicians and psychologists were involved in these decisions. Indeed, these interrogations were supervised by physicians and psychologists who had the power to stop them. (My column today touches on this question.)

Time and intensity are relevant factors. Who would argue that a single night of sleep deprivation constitutes torture? Who would argue that a month of sleep deprivation is not?

2) Remember that Abu Zubaydah said: “Brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardships.”

Any interrogator worth his salt would understand this means it is his job to bring his subject to the point at which cooperation is no longer betrayal but permitted according to his religious beliefs. Can that be achieved short of torture? Sure. Can it be achieved without coercive interrogation techniques? No, not with subjects who have the beliefs described above.

That makes a little more sense than the information that came out in the original reports (which were sourced to a liberal blogger).