Waterboarding is one of those words that is pushed on the public in order to distract or mislead people from thinking about the actual crime it involves.
On the latest edition of On The Media, they did a fantastic job of exploring the manipulation of this word and what it means. At one point, a high-up military official comes on and says that actually the name waterboarding is incorrect, the real name should be Drowning Torture, because that is what it is. Later in the program some people argue about the semantics of what drowning is and can you drown if you don’t die, but nevermind that. The point that was made should render all following arguements moot… stop calling it Waterboarding.. if someone uses the term Waterboarding when talking about what United States soldiers are doing to prisoners, correct them – IT IS drowning torture… and it always has been.
After World War II, in 1947, the United States actually convicted a Japanese soldier of “Waterboarding”.. Drowning Torture. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labor.
More than 50 years later… it is about time that the individuals responsible for ordering and carrying out Drowning Torture get sentenced to some hard labor of their own.