Waterboarding was used to try and force confession of Iraq/Al Qaeda connections

KSM Questioned About al Qaeda-Iraq Ties During Waterboarding

This story from the Huffington Post confirms that the Bush administrations was using torture to get statements they wanted from terrorists. Normal methods got all the useful information possible. And lets face the facts, Al Qaeda was not going to continue planning an operation of moving a sell after one of its members was captured. They are not as dumb as Bush and most of the GOP voters.

Waterboarding is an perfect torture for brainwashing methods, when one tries to change the fundamental world view of the person from political reasons. Since it does not kill the individual it can be applied over and over and over again. But during it the individuals ability to speak is radically diminished. The victim of waterboarding can not scream out some secret or mumble some important detail under their breath. If they want to confess to make it stop they would probably have to wait a significant time to be able to speak after the method is applied.

Anyone who thinks about this can clearly see how this method is suppose to work. The victim of waterboarding, held down and having water poured over their mouth, is not meant to be the speaker, he is meant to be the listener. It is like torture in Orwell's 1984, nothing the victim says can change it, in this case the victim can not even speak, nor is he intended to speak. He is intended to listen, to hear what those people holding him want him to confess to for political purposes.

The act of waterboarding is inflicted again and again until perhaps the victim breaks and starts to believe what he is being told. In this case the Bush administration want Al Qaeda to say they were connected to Iraq. For the Al Qaeda members this would have been the ultimate rejection of everything they believed in. Saddam was the most vile evil in the eyes of Islamic Fundamentalists and for and Al Qaeda member to say they work with Iraq would be like getting a US Soldier in the Korean War to say that American was a Fascist Imperialist State and the People all needed Korean style Communism.

In both cases the solution of power was the same: waterboarding. A method that did not allow the victim to speak, but forced a radical kind of listening, a kind of brain washing to try and force confessions that confirmed to political ideology.

Again this is how low America went under Bush. It is time for the people of America to consider a truth commission like South Africa had. The sin of Bush as President must be dealt with. Today Obama's popularity is saving US esteem around the world, but if the evils of Bush are not fully expunged world confidence in American ideas will continue to vanish.