Every right wing jackass who supports torture and somehow made it through a version of SERE school loves to brag about being "waterboarded", how they survived it ever so bravely, and how they know it's not torture. "I've been through so much worse", they cry, the small box, the yelling, the slapping, the nakedness, and the other horrible travails they somehow survived. That's right Ollie North. It's you and your army of fellow posers I'm addressing.
I'll throw in a free rant about JPRA you've never heard before. How I think the Air Force JPRA instructors are/were the biggest bunch of bullies and posers in the entire military, and especially special operations, world. I've been through their training, repeatedly, and have zero respect for them.
And who am I, to label others as posers and wannabe's and jackasses? Good question. I retired last year after 22 years as a Navy SEAL. I reached the highest enlisted rank of Master Chief, and deployed and deployed and deployed. I've done lots and lots of interrogations. My opinions are my own, but they are both earned and informed.
What's the difference between torture and SERE school? Orders. In the military, orders are the document that tells you where and when to go, and when, exactly, you will return. "Hey, I got orders for SERE school--I'm leaving Thursday and will be gone for exactly xx days before I fly home."
If you have orders... you're going to band camp, you're going to school, you're maybe gonna do something difficult, but you know exactly when you're coming home. It's the psychological difference between real fear and fake induced tension. You know exactly when you are coming home. Do you realize the psychological advantage of knowing exactly when you're flying home from SERE school? You aren't actually being held by people you believe hate you and are never ever going to let you leave or see the light of day again.
There are all sorts of water boarding videos on YouTube. Iraq war fan Christopher Hitchens lasting a few seconds before he pees on himself. Some Playboy magazine showoff lasting six seconds. Others. But all these demos have some huge things in common. It's voluntary. It ends exactly when the tourist wants it to end, and never starts again. It isn't introduced by days or weeks of limited or no sleep, there haven't been hours and days of stress positions, hours and days of early stage hypothermia, hours and days of slapping and questioning and yelling and threats. And yet.... they last a few seconds only, and never consider letting it happen again.
JeffersonianDemocrat has written two great diaries on this subject. Please read them. This is more of a rant than his reasoned discussion, but I think there's room for both. I've been to the Navy SERE school in Maine and various JPRA versions. I've also undergone lots of much less formal, but often much more brutal, internal unit training dealing with stress, detention, resistance, and interrogation. Back in the old days, the Navy had parallel SERE schools in California and Maine. California used the waterboard. Maine used smoke. Smoke? Yep. At the appropriate time you were dropped to your knees and told to count backwards from 100, or something similar. Your interrogator/instructor had a coffee tin filled with charcoal and a small length of rubber hose. You counted, he blew smoke into your lungs until you quit or passed out. On being awakened, many students were "broken"--they would do or say anything to avoid more smoke. Even though there was no more smoke on the schedule. Oh, it sucked. You spit out black crap for the next few day, especially if you're a SEAL with huge lung capacity and a willingness to keep counting until unconsciousness. They don't do smoke anymore, and haven't for a long time. Turns out it can actually do some real damage, even in the SERE controlled environment.
So, JPRA. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. They teach a few different versions of SERE school. The first time I went, I remember whispering to a buddy: "Who are these jackasses?". It was a combination of bluster and incompetence and bullying. It wasn't like Navy SERE school, created by Viet Nam POW's. It wasn't like Nick Rowe's Army version. It was an Air Force wannabe version. When the exercise portion of the course was over, and the instruction phase began, I asked: "Hey, have any of you people ever actually done an interrogation?". Amazingly, the answer was no...these people were SERE instructors, not interrogators. They didn't want real interrogators teaching there, they wanted bullies and loud mouths and theorists. Needless to say, they didn't like me. Cooperate and graduate became my mantra. This too will pass, and these aren't the last insufferable jackasses you'll have to get a graduation certificate to keep on deploying and going after bad guys.
So, I wasn't surprised this week with the JPRA/torture connection. I wasn't surprised when the senior JPRA genius who thought SERE techniques like water boarding should be introduced to the interrogation curriculum had never actually done a real interrogation himself. I wasn't surprised the FBI walked out of the room and refused to participate in these interrogations. And I wasn't surprised to hear Ollie North on the Hannity show, talking about his days at SERE school, his waterboard experience, his perfect knowledge that waterboarding was not torture.
Oh, incidentally, why does no one ask the usual Fox talking heads why they hate the sainted Reagan so much? Why do they spend all day attacking the work of the president who signed the International Convention Against Torture, but never by name?
Thanks for reading.