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This is an account from a marine sniper. Of course, they didn't waterboard him 183 times in a month as the Bush administration did to a detainee.

SERE training consists of torturing you… they torture you through different methods, they starve you, and they lock you in a little cement box. You actually have to sign a waiver at the beginning of the course saying that you won’t hold them responsible for any physical damage done to yourself. Like my partner got his nose broken ...they lock you in a footlocker for four hours, and then they pull you out and you can’t stand up because your legs are numb. You want to kill yourself by the time you get out of that fucking thing.

They come by and beat on the locker with a bat every couple minutes to make sure that you’re not falling asleep, and just to stress you out ...

The worst thing that I ever experienced in SERE school was the waterboard. Only 5-10% of SERE school students did it … they called it the water torture device. That’s where they strap you down on a declined board and they pour water in your mouth.

To simulate that you’re drowning?

Yeah. They drown you. They DO drown you. I thought, “they’re not going to kill me…this is training, right?”

I was fighting and choking and swallowing water for a minute or two, and then I acted like I passed out to get them to stop pouring water. In the meantime they’re asking me questions like “Where did you helicopter land?” “How many are in your group?” “Where were you going?” “What are you doing in our country?”..its all simulated like you’re in another country. I’m thinking that they’re going to stop doing this, but they don’t.They just keep pouring the water. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and I started inhaling water. I freaked out….I’ve never freaked out worse in my life. I ripped a leather strap off the board, and then pulled the cloth off my face, turned my head to grasp some air, and then five guys jumped on me. They kept holding me down pouring water in my mouth. I was choking, and I thought I was dying….I FELT like I was dying.

source

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Comments

  • kevinunknown said on Jun 11, 2009....

    Bloc I totally agree this is torture. Just one little problem is your source. he’s not a sniper. Firstly his account is SERE is total rubbish if you read that entire interview it makes no sense he’s not using the right terminology or describing things in the right way. I know quite a few military people and i even know one guy who is a Royal Marine sniper he never went through any of that stuff. The guy in that interview is not a Marine it’s just all wrong and there for LIE’s.

  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 11, 2009....
    I know some military people myself.  Our military has to be re-socialized.  Civilians call it training.  It is only right if you are going to use these procedures on others, you must experience them for yourself. 
    Downing usually ends in death.  This dude is still talking.  WTF?
    If this was the case, I would "drown" every damn day.

    Funny how words can be manipulated...

  • bloc said on Jun 11, 2009....
    @door
    Words mean different things to different people. I bet I can find a whole lot of examples of people saying things like "I was drowning and then got rescued". Is that word manipulation?

    Of course, this is tangential to the real issue. We've prosecuted japanese for waterboarding americans. It was torture when done to americans and it's torture when done by americans.

    @kevin
    I was in the military. Please point out something specific. Waterboarding is a part of SERE training.

    Here is an interview with another person who wen through the training.
  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 11, 2009....
    No, it has a whole other meaning.  Drown means dead in this context. 

    Ok.  waterboarding is torture. 
    For pussies, like Jesse Ventura
    But we already knew he was.

    If we want to have a REAL discussion on torture, let's use a GOOD example.
    REAL TORTURE.


  • nonameneeded said on Jun 11, 2009....
    they do all that so that if you get caotured in feild you have already developed coping mecanisims for the torture. in all reality they train you to resist torture from the moment you enter boot camp. all the yelling the instructers do and all the P.T are forms of subtle torture meant to break you down and build you back up into a torture proof killing machine. m g-granddaddy was in the 101 mountain division in ww2 and he told me stories of instructers violently assualting recrutes in order to keep them on their toes and prepaired for anything but the attacks (as he described them) were meant more to ready you for sudden physical pain.
  • stopmediabias said on Jun 12, 2009....

    And what about the Marines, Generals and numerous other people who say it is not torture?  Jarret's blog?  Great source, why don't you just post a link to Kelly's blog?  I could tear that shreds just based on the book One Shot One Kill, a book on the history of snipers, I'll bet that whole blog article is complete bullshit, just glancing over it I found several very laughable things that are complete nonsense.

    How can something be torture if it doesn't rise to the level of extreme pain and suffering?  No!  Don't answer that, God not another one of these.

     

  • Cussane said on Jun 12, 2009....
    let me put my 2 cents worth here,
     
    1. SERE school or the different variations from each military is not torture, it is training, training that is designed to help you evade capture and when you do get captured resist the methods that maybe used by the emeny to obtain information, be quite clear here, you will break, my old instructor, who i believe was in the army when Jesus was a private used to tell us everyone will break, it is just a matter of time, the training is designed so that enough time will pass to make any information you may have useless. yes it is brutal torture, remember we send our troops into bad bad places where bad bad things happen, sorry, i want my training to give me the best possible edge,
     
    2.
  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 12, 2009....
    This training is called preparing a civilian for the unknown battlefield, EQUIPPED. 
    We can argue anything, but every country has to have a prepared Military.
    We can not send people out into battlefield without this training,
    without compromising our own country.

    We do that enough on our own...

    There is no way to understand what will happen out there, all we can do is prepare our Military before sending them out to "war'.
    This is preparation (could be considered a manipulation of words).

    I couldn't join the military, but I do know snipers.  They are generally trained to snipe, not to get information. 

    They are however subject to boot camp, etc., which is re-socializing. 

    War was never meant to be pretty.
  • stopmediabias said on Jun 12, 2009....

    There is are severe problems with bloc's arguement.

    #1-He has never proved we have tortured anyone neither has anyone else for that matter.

    #2-Every post about torture (which is designed to spur debate) he starts stating plainly and clearly we torture people which is false.  This is akin to a prosecutor while trying a murder starting off an opening statement "the murderer sitting right over there." before the case has been proven. 

    #3-In his opening post he mentions the 183 times, which comes from the memos that President Obama released.  The same memos clearly show we did not torture people and it certainly wasn't our intention to torture anyone AND what we actually did in the interrogations brought lifesaving information.  Technically torture doesn't work in getting valuable information. 

    Basic law tells us any document that is flawed in part is flawed in whole, meaning you can't use a single piece of evidence from a document if part of the document is false.  If he is going to use the 183 times then he also has to recognize all the other things in the memos that show we didn't torture people and we saved lives.

     

  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 12, 2009....
    smb - Do not agree with the #3.  Every document has some bias too it.  it is up to the reader to wade through it and check and pull out actual facts.  To do otherwise breeds sheep.  Much like in our courtrooms, these are rules given to a jury.  of course u always have the choice to throw it all out since they are totally useless.  But there is no need to disbelieve an entire doc/person just because he says something u don't agree with.  Otherwise, we wouldn't be even bothering here. 
  • stopmediabias said on Jun 12, 2009....

    If bloc uses the "183 times" to make the assumption that we torture people he cannot reject the other things that show we didn't and don't torture people.  Plus the 183 times in the context he is using it is misleading and makes no sense.

    If I'm reading a news source regarding our President and it has a number of valid facts and then states "Barack Obama is a Muslim." I am not going to cherry pick the valid facts (even though they may be true) I am going to reject the entire source and move on if the source cannot reasonably prove what everyone knows is a lie. 

  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 14, 2009....
    smb - the body of #3 was not here when i was.  I agree. 
    Only the last paragraph was here. 
    My point is that everything is bias because it is written by people.  Even though it may be full of shit, HOPEFULLY, certain facts can be pulled out.  This can be checked by looking at many sources.   Of course this is irrelevant now that I see your entire comment.  
  • bloc said on Jun 15, 2009....
    Here is all the proof needed. Our government has prosecuted japanese for waterboarding americans, Bush authorized waterboarding, therefore via legal precedence we tortured people.

    Of course Bush's torture policy was not limited to waterboarding. We would leave people in stress positions naked in freezing cells, then we'd waterboard them before sticking them in tiny boxes. We'd follow that up by chaining them in painful positions that prevented them from sleeping, again naked. They would often defecate on themselves while chained in these stress positions. Occasionally someone would dump water on them to make them even colder. 

  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 16, 2009....
    "Bush authorized waterboarding, therefore via legal precedence we tortured people."

    This cannot be true or proof of anything.  Legal precedence means we can, not did.

    I could be totally wrong here, but didn't Bush hire contractors to do the dirty work our military wasn't allowed too? 

    I seem to recall a lot of mail flying around needing vets to come join in for lots of money as contractors.  Another way to get around your "valuable" treaties. 
  • bloc said on Jun 17, 2009....
    What can't be true?

    1. The US prosecuted Japanese for waterboarding americans
    2. Bush authorized waterboarding
    3. Therefore Bush authorized torture

    We did use contractors to do some of the torture, but teh CIA did a lot of it as well. However, using a contractor doesn't absolve the US from it's treaty obligations. 
  • stopmediabias said on Jun 17, 2009....
    Door-Go back into the archives, into bloc's and everyones archives and read about torture.  All this crap has been debunked so many times it has now become boring.  Bloc knows he wrong he's just bring up the same tired old arguements because he has nothing else.  We don't torture people and everyone knows that.
     
  • doortoinsanity said on Jun 17, 2009....
    smb - Thank you. :-)


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