American leftists are now forcing a public debate over the question of what constitutes torture. The political novice who now occupies the Oval Office finds it necessary to declassify all of the legal memoranda from the previous administration which describe the ten enhanced interrogation methods used to obtain information from jihadists captured on the field of battle. Yet, he refuses to release memoranda detailing information gained in those interrogations, information which prevented the wanton murder of many thousands of innocent Americans. One might suspect that his motives have little to do with the “transparency” he has promised, ad nauseum.  

In a memorandum dated August 1, 2002, from Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee to Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, the Justice Department responds in great detail to all possible ramifications of ten enhanced interrogation techniques for which the CIA had requested approval. These are:

1.      Attention Grasp – The interrogator grasps both sides of the subject’s collar opening, demanding his/her attention.                                                                             

2.      Walling – The subject is placed with his heels and back against a flexible wall. The interrogator then grasps the subject by the collar, pulls him slightly forward, and pushes him back against the wall making a loud noise.

3.      Facial Hold – The interrogator gains the subject’s attention by placing one hand on each side of the subject’s face… much like a parent insuring a child’s undivided attention.

4.      Facial Slap – The interrogator slaps the subject with an open hand and spread fingers. The technique is intended more as an insult than as a means of inflicting pain.

5.      Cramped Confinement – The subject is placed in a dark confined space. When subjects are held in larger confined spaces, where the subject can either stand or sit, confinement may last up to eighteen hours. In smaller confined spaces, where subjects must remain seated, the confinement lasts no more than two hours.

6.      Wall Standing – The subject is required to stand four or five feet from a wall, leaning forward and supporting himself with his fingers pressed against the wall.

7.      Stress Positions – The subject is required to either sit on the floor with his legs extended straight out in front of him and his arms raised above his head, or kneel on the floor while leaning backward at a 45 degree angle.

8.      Sleep Deprivation – A subject’s ability to think and reason is substantially reduced by sleep deprivation. Since the advent of “heavy metal” and “rap” music, the CIA has accumulated an immense library of unpleasant noises which make sleep impossible.

9.      Insect In Confinement Box – For arachnophobic subjects confined in small spaces, interrogators may place a harmless insect inside the confinement box with the subject. The subject is led to believe that the insect may be poisonous or that it may sting.

10. Waterboarding – The subject is secured to a flat bench with his feet higher than his head and a cloth placed over his face. Water is then poured over the cloth causing the subject to experience the feeling of drowning, although no water ever enters the subject’s lungs.

Most military veterans, especially veterans of the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps, and the service academies, may wish that their training regimen had been as simple and painless. So what is the difference between what liberals today call “torture” and, say, the training regimen that U.S. military personnel routinely endure as a part of their training?

As a Korean War era draftee, I well remember my eighteen weeks of sheer hell. The process of breaking men down to the point where they can be retrained as soldiers is a painful one. As an example, one of my fellow E-1s, Private James Fleer (not his real name) who bunked directly across the aisle from me, was a newlywed, one of the few married men in our platoon. After our first six weeks of training his wife left Minnesota and rented an apartment in a small town near our base. By common consent, Fleer was given access to the one overnight pass available to our platoon.

Then, after our customary Saturday afternoon rifle inspection, an ordeal in which our entire 72-man platoon was required to stand at strict attention in the blazing southern sun for two hours or more, without moving a muscle, without ever glancing to the right or to the left, and without ever swatting at a fly… even when that fly might crawl into and out of a nostril… Freer rushed to the Orderly Room to pick up his overnight pass.

After pumping out 35 pushups for the Battery Clerk, Fleer was instructed to see the Battery First Sergeant, Sergeant First Class Minton. Then, after pumping out an additional 35 pushups before being allowed to address the First Sergeant, Fleer regained his feet, snapped to attention, and announced, “Sir! Private Fleer requesting permission to leave the post, Sir!” 

As it turned out, Fleer had failed to pick up all of his spent brass from the four 8-round clips of .30 cal. ammunition he’d fired on the rifle range the previous day. Instead of turning in 32 spent cartridges, Fleer had turned in only 31. Sgt. Minton had retrieved the 32^nd cartridge and it was standing on the front edge of his desk on Saturday afternoon when Fleer appeared before him for his overnight pass. Fleer was ordered to return to our barracks, retrieve his entrenching tool (a 24 in. collapsible shovel), crawl into the 24 in. high crawl space beneath our barracks, and dig a “six-by,” a hole in the ground six feet long, six feet wide, and six feet deep.

For hours, Fleer worked like a madman, gritting his teeth, cursing, and moaning. Then, at around 7:00 PM, when he had produced a hole that approximated a “six-by,” he crawled out from beneath the barracks, his sweat-soaked clothes matted with mud from head to toe. Sgt. Minton was waiting for him. He handed Fleer a single .30 cal. cartridge casing, saying, “Okay, Fleer, I want you to bury this cartridge in the bottom of that hole. And in the future, when you’re told to turn in 32 spent cartridges, maybe you’ll remember to turn in all 32 pieces.”

Fleer took the spent cartridge, tossed it into the bottom of the hole, and worked like a madman to drag all of the soil back under the barracks and into the hole. It took more hours of frenzied labor to refill the hole and by 11:00 PM Fleer was back in the barracks, showering and putting on a fresh Class A uniform… anxious to finally see his wife who had been waiting patiently for him the entire afternoon and evening, unaware of the plight that had befallen him. 

Rushing into the Orderly Room he dropped on his face before the Battery Clerk, pumped out 35 pushups, and was given permission to speak to the First Sergeant. And when he had pumped out 35 more excruciatingly painful pushups and was standing at strict attention before Sergeant Minton, he shouted out, “Sir! Private Fleer requesting permission to leave the post, Sir!”

Sergeant Minton allowed Fleer to stand there for several long minutes before looking up. Then he said, “Yes, Fleer. You can have your overnight pass to see your wife… but you’ll have to retrieve it.” With an evil sneer on his face, he continued, “You see, it was rolled up inside that cartridge casing you buried beneath the barracks tonight. Now get the hell out of here!”

Fleer returned to the barracks, dressed in fatigues, retrieved his entrenching tool, crawled under the barracks, and proceeded to dig. It was hard for the rest of us to sleep that night. All we could hear through the long hours was Fleer moaning and cursing beneath our floor and the monotonous “Chiff! Chiff! Chiff!” of his shovel as he dug toward the little brass cylinder that stood between him and the loving arms of his wife.

It is just one small example of the brutality and the emotional cruelty that we endured on a daily basis throughout the fall and early winter of 1953 as we prepared to go into battle on the Korean Peninsula. Yet it is no more or no less than what thousands of others have endured as they were prepared for the job of defending our great country.  

The treatment that the GITMO detainees received as they were subjected to the first nine of the enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice would have been a “walk in the park” for my comrades and me. Were we “waterboarded?” No, but we faced the threat of being beaten senseless with bare fists when we moved an eyeball to the right or to the left during weekly rifle inspections, or when we swatted at a pesky fly that persisted in crawling into and out of our nostrils.

Many U.S. military personnel have been subjected to “waterboarding” as part of their training regimen… especially those whose military occupations might make them susceptible to capture and imprisonment by the enemy. However, according to Pentagon records, of the 26,829 cadets who were subjected to Air Force SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) training between 1992 and 2001, only 0.14 percent of those who experienced “waterboarding” were dropped from the program for psychological reasons. 

What it all boils down to is that torture is torture only in the eyes of the beholder. Would Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues have us believe that the U.S. military has been “torturing” its own personnel as a routine part of their training? Or are we to understand that when the beholder happens to be a liberal Democrat, especially one intent upon doing damage either to our country or to a Republican administration, torture can be defined as anything that goes beyond the offer of a cup of tea and the words, “Would you please tell me…?”