Rove: Three More Detainees Waterboarded?
Check out this tidbit MadDog found:
In 2008, CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three high-profile al-Qaeda detainees, and not for the past five years.
One of those was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a key suspect in the 9/11 attacks.
Mr Rove said US soldiers were subjected to waterboarding as a regular part of their training.
A less severe form of the technique was used on the three suspects interrogated at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, he added.
Maybe this is a typo. But it appears to feature Turdblossom, boasting that three Gitmo prisoners (as DOD detainees, not included among the three CIA detainees who got waterboarded), got waterboarded in some “less severe” form.
One word: parallel.
As per usual, EW is on the ball!
I didn’t even notice the “Gitmo” part, and just focused on the “less severe” part.
That said, I’m guessing Turdblossom is just talking through his ass, and considering his Nom de merde, that’s entirely appropriate.
I’m not so sure. Remember the post I did a few days ago,in which DOD asked Goldsmith for something in 2004. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was waterboarding.
That still may be true, and I wouldn’t be surprised, but still, after listening to the Beeb’s interview of Turdblossom several more times, his statement that is the focus of this post does not appear.
It may be that other parts of the interview that were not broadcast in the video piece formed the basis of this quote. The Beeb has a fairly good reputation for quote accuracy, so I don’t doubt Turdblossom said it.
As to Turdblossom’s accuracy and truthfulness, he’s at the other end of the scale compared with the Beeb. *g*
And further, based on a number of your most recent posts, I’ve been thinking the last several days about the genesis of waterboarding as the “interrogation technique”.
One of the scenarios that seems possible is during the beginning phases of removing the Taliban from power in the initial stages of the Afghanistan war.
The only US forces on the ground were CIA operatives and Special Operations soldiers.
As prisoners were captured, those suspected of being either Al Qaeda or Taliban would be targets for interrogation by the US forces.
The CIA operatives knew zilch about interrogation, but the Special Operations forces had all been through SERE as a mandatory requirement to be in Special Operations.
It seems a likely possibility that when the subject of interrogating prisoners came up, the Special Operations forces would have told their CIA operative counterparts that they knew of “fool-proof techniques” to make prisoners talk. Particularly their SERE experiences with waterboarding.
I’d even say there is a even a distinct possibility that the Special Operations forces demonstrated this for their CIA operative counterparts on the intial inflow of suspect Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
Then those CIA operatives communicate back to CIA Headquarters about this totally effective interrogation technique for breaking prisoners.
And while the CIA Headquarter honchos are all in a buzz about this great find, “coincidentally” the OVP and DOD upper crust are also seeing these same CIA Field “totally effective interrogation technique” reports in realtime (I have zero doubt that Cheney himself wanted in on the CIA realtime reporting, and that he got it. Daily! That is a lifelong Cheney SOP).
After that, the waterboarding snowball was rapidly pushed downhill by the OVP, DOD and CIA as a solution just waiting to solve the US government’s Al Qaeda ignorance problem.
And I’m sure the fact that it doesn’t leave marks didn’t hurt in the calculus of adopting it as an
confessioninformation gathering technique.or “mis-information generating technique”?
Excellent hypothesis. Of course, we need some clarification on “totally effective interrogation technique for breaking prisoners.” What that probably means is that they found that the victims would say anything after being waterboarded. So all that would be needed is to guide their responses by asking leading questions, and presto! You could get them to say whatever you want.
Bob in AZ
Bingo!
During the Vietnam era, in American society, it was considered a duty to only give one’s “name, rank and serial number”. Nothing more.
On the contrary, the US found that prisoners were spilling their guts, making things up on the fly, just to survive. So the biggest thing that impressed me about the SERE program was the theme that, “you will, eventually, talk. You will say anything to stop the torture”. We were cautioned about making up lies, something easily found out and retributive punishment could be fatal. Most important was the idea that we would not be considered traitors for talking. We were given “tastes” of torture techniques, to help us understand what was happening should we find ourselves in a POW situation. It was a learning environment and not torture. Even so, I have seen people do things, after three days, that they regret to this day, in their case a result of improper debrief.
BTW, we have allowed the “right” to frame torture as individual torture acts, when, in fact, it is the overall torture environment that is so demeaning to the spirit, reducing a “prisoner’s” responses to below that of a wild animal. I can bet that I can get Rove to admit that he was Saddam, at least in that environment.
Well remember that only the Navy used it.
There’s a much better line drawn through Addington, though, to our past torture programs.
Actually, the other services also used waterboarding as well, but at some point in time, they discontinued it.
From page 6 of the “Memorandum Regarding Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative (August 1, 2002”) – Bybee memo (18 page PDF):
It may be that some of the non-Navy Special Ops folks on the ground in Afghanistan had taken their service’s SERE training when it was still included. Or it might be that Navy Seals were the culprits.
As to Addington being a waterboarding source from his CIA tenure, I agree that’s a possibility as well, but one that might be less likely unless we assume he had an almost universal knowledge of things CIA that included the CIA’s past history of torture programs.
But one of my basic points was that during the early initial stages of the Afghanistan war, the only US forces on the ground were CIA operatives and Special Operations soldiers, and that of that group, the Special Ops forces were likely the only ones with knowledge of prisoner interrogation.
And that really goes to one of the main points of your post that the DOD, and not just the CIA, went down the path of torture.
I don’t think this is what happened. The push for waterboarding came from the top.
Also, the idea that the CIA had no interrogation capability is just wrong. They were heavy into torture in the ’60s and only ‘got out of that business’ by hiding the programs in the DIA budget. Those went deeper underground during Cheney’s stint as DefSec, but they never went away. After 9/11, it appears that some folks ‘came out of retirement’ (check out KSM’s version of events in the ICRC report).
My scenario in no way precludes the actual push from the top, and as a matter of fact, expressly says that.
The fact that usage of SERE techniques on the ground in the initial stages of the Afghanistan war by SERE-trained Special Ops forces might have been the bread crumb trail that lead those DC-based higher-ups to jump on the SERE, and in particular, waterboarding technique bandwagon is not negated by that obvious push from the War Council top dogs in DC.
Yes and no. *g*
I do agree with both you and EW that the CIA had a past history regarding torture, but I also have read a number of CIA-sourced or Intel-sourced versions of the story that the CIA really lacked prisoner interrogation expertise. Their expertise was on debriefing defectors, not interrogating prisoners.
The Special Ops folks on the other hand had specific training on interrogating prisoners.
And as you of all folks are well aware of, Occam’s razor should be the first tool we think of using to shave this critter. *g*
MD
We know that Cheney and Addington both had their fingers in the past torture practices of CIA and School of the Americas.
They wouldn’t need JSOC guys in the field to tell them about them. They knew about them.
Thanks for pointing out this important fact. I’ve spent a lot of time, as have others, trying to make this same point, and document it.
In the BBC article there’s this:
It is precisely this that piece of propaganda I’ve also tried to show is a lie. At least since 2002, waterboarding was only done at the Navy SERE school. Subsequently, the Brunswick branch of Navy SERE discontinued due to the dangerousness of doing this even in training (intolerably high levels of cortisol in the brain stem) and inducement of “learned helplessness” psychological condition. The JPRA fought to stop waterboarding at this last school, the fight lasting into 2007 or early 2008. From a close read of the SASC Levin report, it appears waterboarding has been discontinued at all of the SERE schools now. (H/T bluebutterfly)
Jeff
What is the significance of cortisol in the brain stem?
From Jeff’s article:
I think it may also interfere with the body’s auto regulatory system i.e may produce heart and breathing rhythm irregularities; but I am not positive on the last.
It’s the level of cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone released from the adrenal glands. High-levels of cortisol are harmful to the organism, inhibiting immune response, reducing adrenal response, and can be toxic to brain cells, among other factors.
With chronic amounts of elevated cortisol (stress), the body tries to adapt, increasiung corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) leads to enhanced negative feedback (increased glucocorticoid receptors), which dampens subsequent response to stress, i.e., you end up after awhile with cortisol hypersuppression. Hence, the system becomes overly sensitized to cortisol, suppresses it, and the ability to utilize it when under stress again is insufficient. This is one model for how “learned helplessness” can occur, i.e. the body’s adaptations to stress are used against it.
The knowledge of human physiology and psychology in the wrong hands has led to a very diabolical situation. I think most people have very little idea of how much evil has been unleashed upon the world with the MKULTRA and other studies. Utilizing Nazi scientists at Edgewood, and good-old-American scientists there and elsewhere, the U.S. has out-done the Nazis or the Soviets in their ability to play around with human beings. God knows the extent of their experimentation.
I’d like to know why they were measuring cortisol levels in the brain stem, and not just blood plasma levels, for instance.
From an interesting scientific article, which I think discusses the cortisol-hypothalamic pituitary axis quite well, and in a way the non-specialist reader can still understand.
Somewhat off topic,but somewhat germane
A month or so ago, you did a wonderful Book Salon with HP Albarelli,to discuss hios book about the death of Frank Olson.
Quite by chance, I came across THIS article about a CIA experiment ,in 1951 involving an entire French town,Mr. Albarelli chanced upon the documents while reserching his book on LSD experimentation and Olson.
Le Pain Maudit-the Cursed Bread
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment – 1 day ago
… the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment. … It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed …
Telegraph.co.uk –
Yes, and I covered this in the intro to the Book Salon. The Pont-St.-Esprit scandal — for what else can we call it? — is starting to break now around the world. Articles in the Aussie, British, Irish, and French press (not so much U.S., except here — and I’m planning a follow-up on it).
Here’s a video interview with author H.P. Albarelli by Russian television on the subject.
Thanks Jeff, really helpful.
O/T, but related to this whole crazy mess. Rachel Maddow engages Nancy Pelosi in discussing the Iraq War, WMDs, taking impeachment off the table.
Thanks for this link. It is depressing to watch. Pelosi is still convinced that impeachable offenses cannot be proven. She must know something I don’t. Or, maybe, her standards of proof are impossibly high.
Bob in AZ
I noticed she dumped on Obama in her first statements saying he had decided to move forward. In summing up the Iraq war she declared it was “a great tragedy”, pathetic.
So impeachment, the house investigation,not being undertaken by her didn’t produce the proof needed for Senate impeachment removal . Simple
As I watched and listened to Pelosi, my thought were, ‘Ah yes, another group, the “political class”, who like the “legal profession” get to self-police …’
Another such group are the churches, the “ecclesiastical profession”.
Self-policing looks to be an ideal “solution”, if arrogance and destruction are the intended aim, as well as the ability for the perpetrators to walk away with only the threat that “the record” might, possibly, someday, suggest that “mistakes” were made.
In a time where money is ALL that matters (along with brute, uncontested power, which money seems to confer) and how one gets money does not, then I guess “self policing” is the supreme measure of God’s benevolence for those whose merit entitles them to self-police their actions and effectively distance themselves, in every way, from any and all negative consequences which might, possibly, somehow, arise from those actions.
These folks have no need of a new” deal, they already have the bestest deal possible, and everyone of them has great health care.
Would universal self-policing be a good idea?
Who could be against it?
(Of course if EVERYBODY had it, it wouldn’t be worth having, from the perspective of them what got it AND, one imagines from the perspective of us whats gonna, someday, somehow, get it.)
DW
I like the separation of the statements into discrete paragraphs. It makes it easier to make statements that imply a connection or qualification without there being the kind that would more normally be indicated by grouping statements into the same paragraph.
Take the last statement, for example. Is the kind of waterboarding used on the three “suspects” at Gitmo “less severe” than the controlled kind to which candidate Naval aviators and SEALs submitted to, once upon a time? Or was it “less severe” than the kind administered to the “three high-profile al-Qaeda detainees”? Or was it “less severe” than something else?
Severity, like beauty, I imagine is in the eye of the beholder, and in the panic of the guy who breathes water instead of air for however long his testosterone- and adrenaline-soaked captors think he can stand it.
I’ve always supposed that someone, somewhere was being waterboarded until the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs (February 2006, if memory serves). Though never sensitive to the law, or to common sense, or to mere humanity, the Administration was always hypersensitive to concrete, negative publicity on a broad scale. You could get away with doing anything at Guantanamo Bay provided no one saw what was happening there (and hence the excitement about the resistance of the FBI).
Hypersensitivity to negative PR is the great (symptomatic) weakness of a sociopath like Cheney–for the sole reason, I suppose, that it can’t be entirely controlled (or hasn’t yet been in the USA). How else to explain his insane response to Wilson? Had he just left Wilson alone, nothing (in my view) would have come of Wilson findings.
The photos became public on April 28, 2004 on 60 Minutes.
I remember Bradbury smirking through his [SJC?] testimony [in ’08?] and insisting repeatedly that the way “we” waterboard is different from the historical examples of waterboarding that senators were coming up with, although he repeatedly refused to describe the difference in any detail. (Presumably, that would be giving “the enemy” TMI about “our techniques,” an argument that always makes me laugh since the “techniques” we’re talking about are forms of brute force that have been blindingly self-evident to brutes through history, hardly the stuff of sophisticated intel.)
All he would say was that “we” do it different and the way “we” do it isn’t criminal. Now we know what he meant by that: it isn’t “criminal” because “we” wrote legal memos redefining what is criminal.
HJC
And of course Bradbury is mistaking what Yoo said was okay with what really happened. But nevermind the facts…
Do you think he was mistaking, or was he consciously lying? Can we tell?
Were his lips moving? If so, he was lying.
Boxturtle (some questions really do have simple answers)
Sounds like we’re starting to know the doings at Camp No.
I take back my coffee deprived comment. Sorry. ;-)
I’ve been trying to edit this comment with no success, obviously. I’d like to retract it. Sorry!
Your link is to the old (Jan 18) article by Scott Horton, also used by Keith Olbermann shortly afterward on Countdown. But thanks for bringing this up again, because the Obama administration has not yet credibly answered Horton’s penetrating criticism, and should not be allowed to sweep this under the rug.
Bob in AZ
Shoot, I just googled “Camp No” and linked to the first article in the queue.
The point is, assuming Rove’s telling the truth about waterboarding going on at Gitmo (remember, the best lies contain some truth and Rove is nothing if not a well-practiced liar), Camp No is the logical place for it to have gone on.
I have to admit, that was my first thought as well, especially with the suggestive numbers – 3 waterboardings, 3 suicides, one of a detainee now cleared for release who might go back and talk – and all with a VP who was telling the Press in 2004 of his knowledge of detainees at GITMO “confessing” to the al-Qaeda/Iraq tie. Nothing concrete or that would stand on terra firma on its own, but it’s hard to keep from linking.
I’m pretty sure this is just a combination of bad reporting and inept bs from Rove. There’s no way he would be spilling this now. The lie he intended to tell was that the waterboarding that the CIA did was less severe than the SERE waterboarding.
(My Bold)
My bet is on the typical inept bs from Turdblossom. I can’t really imagine that the Cheney and Addington crew, who had nothing but disdain for Rove, ever let him anywhere near their Top Secret SCI torture discussions.
Turdblossom was Junya’s political tricks clown, but not a member of Cheney’s dark side cabal.
They had different portfolios, esp. during Bush’s first term: Rove for domestic policy, Cheney & Addington for FoPo. However, these intersected at such issues as domestic wiretapping, framed as a pursuit of HumInt regarding terrorism.
Bob in AZ
My heart rate is up. BBC just had Karl Rove on. Why are media outlets giving this fucking bloody pathological liar (I believe a psychopath) air time? This lying mother fucker was on flipping the script about the invasion of Iraq, voicing his support for torture. BBC’sClair Baldeson did not do a good job at challenging Bush’s Asshole. She allowed him to rant.
Karl Rove has and continues to be a threat to U.S. National Security.
I think they’re hoping the egotistical bastard incriminates himself to the point the he must be charged or pardoned.
They do not realize how important it is for ObamaCo NOT to prosecute any BushCo person for anything.
And barring the appearence of HD footage showing Dick Cheney personally executing prisoners with a flamethrower in American territory, that’s not going to change.
Boxturtle (Shame? No, we’re fresh out of that. Sorry)
You know what else would change things? If one of the major national East Coast newspapers (i.e., WaPo or NYT) started a series on “War Crimes”– maybe hiring Scott Horton to manage the series. IIRC, “Watergate” achieved national fame and attention because Woodward & Bernstein wrote not just one article in the WaPo, but a whole series that kept pounding on the subject, with new material each time.
The BushCo war crimes involved so many people doing so many things that there would be abundant material for a long-running series. It could start out with reports on the front line criminals, who actually carried out the crimes, and then work on up the chain towards Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush.
The series could start with Taguba’s conclusion that war crimes were committed, using that as its charter to “flesh out” Taguba’s assertion.
That would force Obama and Holder to get off their duffs and do what they should already be doing.
Bob in AZ
Doubtful. The information is already public for all practical purposes, and has been in the major papers, though obviously not highlighted.
Here’s the basic equation: If Obama doesn’t want to prosecute, the only way to make him is to threaten his job. The votes aren’t there to impeach by a long shot. The citizens are generally quite okay with the idea of scary brown moslems being waterboarded and they consider the idea that scary brown moslems are actually entitled to due process to be silly. I’m waiting for someone to actually propose a constitutional amendment codifying that.
Obama has already lost the progressives and he knows it. I’m not sure he cares.
Boxturtle (Chicago politician, remember?)
Funny — sounds like a description of a website I know … Well, several sites, to be fair. More and more allatime. We keep at this, we could be talking real numbers. Some day.
Yeah, but EW doesn’t get as many eyeballs as the NYT or the WaPo, and the Power Elite in Washington pay more attention to those dead tree media than they do to EW et al. We know the information is “out there,” but it is not getting noticed. Besides, the NYT and the WaPo compete with each other: If one starts a major series and keeps pounding on it, the other has to pay attention and fund competing stories. There’s a big difference between the information being “out there,” and the information being concentrated and focused in a critical mass among the right change agents.
Which reminds me, Sy Hersh has been quiet for a long time. What’s he up to?
(This was supposed to be a riff on “Which reminds me, Ed, how’s your Mom?”)
Bob in AZ
“incriminates himself”
WMD lying, outing Plame, supporting breaking International torture agreements is not enough? What the fuck do they need? Lies under oath about blowjobs?
Why oh why did Fitz not silence this fuck.
He is truly a U.S. National security risk
Fitz didn’t charge him because he didn’t believe, based upon his years of experience as a lawyer, that he could get a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.
If he had charged Rove and lost, the Rove would have gone around forever waving the flag marked “the jury found me innocent”, and every time someone called him a liar a legion of wingnuts would have risen up to shout them down.
I have never understood why Cheney did not have to testify in public? Did they need a blowjob to get him in that chair
Obviously, that would help. :-)
In order to force this Karl would have to admit to a crime that a foreign court was willing to charge or admit to something so heinous that ObamaCo would have to act.
The wiretapping was Karl’s main baby and foreign government could care less what America’s government does to Americans. Karl was hardly involved in the areas that could generate war crimes indictments.
But Karl’s ego is his worst enemy. As long as he’s babbling about how brilliant he is, he’s off his guard and might say something new. And that something could be the last straw.
Boxturtle (Being a Browns fan, I understand how hope works)
What preparation must it take before interviewing one of these critters, to avoid being hypnotized into silence by the magnitude of their bullshit!
Rove rolled over Clair Baldeson. She cold have challenged him on so many of his lying statements
She did not seem prepared at all. This peasant could have done a better job challenging him
I think Karl’s most flagrant disregard of US national security was his setting up the gwb43.com email system and then encouraging all White House senior staff to use it exclusively.
No telling what information hostile powers were able to glean from this unclassifed communications network.
Karl continues to be a threat to U.S. National Security
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/03/100308_karl_rove_waterboarding.shtml
He rolled over Clare Baldeson. No real challenges
If I were the Judge. Karl would serve the rest of his life in Walter Reed caring for American soldiers who have been injured for life by the Bush administrations “pack of lies”
I saw more than one report (including in Suskind’s book) about al-Libi being waterboarded. I’ve thought they meant while in Egyptian hands – along with his live burial. But he did get returned to the US, to GITMO, in early 2004.
And in 2004, Cheney was saying that GITMO detainees had confirmed the link between al-Qaeda and Hussein.
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgment_guidance/judgments/mohamed100210.htm
And after he floated that, it got tamped down – not picked up elsewhere. I didn’t look at Levin’s committee report much, but I wonder if GITMO detainees giving evidence of Iraq training al-Qaeda is in there – and if not, why not, if the VP told the press that it had happened.
fwiw
There is support for that.
One other thing to keep in mind. Cheney tried to order up the waterboarding of an Iraqi in 2003 to prove ties between AQ and Iraq.
Jeeminy – talk about a blast from the past, I’d completely forgotten that, Duelfer’s claim.
Link in case there’s anyone as forgetful as me –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5325680/Dick-Cheney-suggested-waterboarding-Iraqi-prisoner.html
And it has come out that the MI guys at GITMO were getting lots of pressure to produce – not info on Bin Laden to help us catch him, but intel to link Hussein to al-Qaeda to retro-justify the Cheney-Bush war of aggression.
The story of the detainee about to be released not meeting with his lawyer then committing suicide days after has always had a bad feel to it. Stranger things happen in life, with innocent explanations, but less strange things happen too, with pretty evil underpinnings.
Blog title situation wanted: “The Flapping Door.”
They,
Mocked him
Spat on his face
Smote him ( to hit hard )
Blindfolded him
stress positioned him (Crucified)
Good Christian soldiers or Roman shock troops in Christ”s day and oh yea about the advancement of civilization talk not much progress in 2000 years.
The reality, Christians they’re not sadists they are and traitors to the human race.
Thank you for a great amount of laughter! (Laughing with you, not at you.)
BBC has done some interesting coverage on the issue of torture. Unfortunately, some reports are no longer loading on their site.
If you have never watched the BBC special, Total Isolation, which was developed with Andy Worthington, it is worth watching. (I linked to it above but did not clarify it.)
(snip)
Finally,
I think Rove is trying to convince himself that he is not a criminal… Enjoy these videos. Rove protested as a War Criminal. The second one is the quicker view. Good for the UCSB student protesters a few weeks ago.
Hope this isn’t a dupe.
British hostage endured mock executions in Iraq
“British computer expert Peter Moore, held captive in Iraq for 2-1/2 years until his release in December, has said he was tortured and subjected to mock executions by a well-trained kidnap gang.”
LINK.
I cannot help but wonder if the BBC was giving Rove “enough rope” so to speak. Why have Rove talk about torture now? Torture has been a recent topic across the pond in their courts. But why Rove on the subject? Now?
Makes one wonder what BBC might have info-wise.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller,former head of MI5, has disclosed that Binyam Mohamed was waterboarded 160 times http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/24-a-diplomatic-row-and-a-spy-chiefs-lecture-on-torture-1919444.html
Aussielawyer
KSM – not Binyam Mohamed. The huge number of waterboardings of Zubaydah and KSM is a story that EW pretty much broke here IIRC. Maybe Dame Eliza will send EW the Dame’s reactions when she found out. ;)
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment – TelegraphMar 12, 2010 … A 50-year mystery over the ‘cursed bread’ of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html – 1 hour ago
Can you fill in the ellipsis in the link; doesn’t work as it is. Thanks.
Try this.
i know i’m late to the party – just wanted to add this for the record.
was in barnes & noble last night. placement of the rove book was a square display case, bottom side shelf, (almost on the floor), facing away from the traffic in & out of the store.
also, only days after release, had a big 20% discount sticker on it.
like you EW – i will wait to read it. holding out until it turns up in the plastic laundry basket full of free books when yard sale season begins this spring.
Need a laugh
Stephen Colbert carves up Karl Rove’s head
http://rawstory.com/2010/03/colbert-carves-karl-roves-head/
Hi,
Either I’m just speculating or maybe we missed the connection. When Karl talked about three waterboarded at Gitmo, I suspected he meant the three who died “swallowing rags.”
It has come out that “swallowing rags” is a euphemism for water boarding, because you swallow and swallow but the towel sometimes get swallowed and choked on, and the person dies.
So it is possible Karl is saying that the three who originally were said to have committed (asymmetric warfare) suicides, and who it has been revealed were killed at an off-Gitmo torture chamber, were in fact water boarded. Karl is confirming the recent revelations. Maybe.