re: #709 haakondahl

Confound me for not knowing my way around this Commie website, but where the Hell is it?

Just FYI, it’s on the first link on the page IW linked. “2004 CIA Office of Inspector General’s Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities Report”. [Direct link to PDF].

She’s wrong though - it’s not footnote 24, 25, or 25, it’s footnote 14:

“According to individuals with authoritative knowledge of the SERE program, the waterboard was used for demonstration purposes on a very small number of students in a class. Except for Navy SERE training, use of the waterboard was discontinued because of its dramatic effect on the students who were subjects.”

Although footnote 26 is also interesting:

According to the Chief, Medical Services, OMS was neither consulted nor
involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of EITs, nor provided with the 01’ 5 report cited in the OLC opinion. In retrospect, based on the OLC extracts of the OTS report, OMS contends that the reported sophistication of the preliminary EIT review was exaggerated, at least as it related to the waterboard, and that the power of this EIT was appreciably overstated in the report. Furthermore, OMS contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologist / interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant. Consequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the water board with the
frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist / interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.