abstract:Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage, and death.
The interrogators were told they could put them in painful standing positions, deprive them of solid food, keep them awake for extended periods of time, lock them in cold rooms, and submit them to the technique of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
VOA: standard.2009.04.17
He says he cannot "in good conscience" support Mukasey because the nominee refused to condemn waterboarding.