Waterboarded by the Japanese

The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning, choking, vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with ever-changing force. To put it mildly, it was ghastly, quite the worst experience of my life. There were occasional intervals for interrogation. How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of some days, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. Eventually I was dumped in my cell, which was so small it offered little scope for movement. At about this time two of my colleagues were beaten to death. Their bodies were dumped in a latrine where they may well remain to this day.

Eric Lomax, a crusty old Scotsman, has a first-person account in the Times of London today of being waterboarded by his Japanese captors during World War II. If waterboarding was just an "enhanced interrogation technique" as Mitt Romney and others would lead us to believe, the captain in command of this torture would likely not have been executed following the war. What's more, this crazy Scot actually tracked down his chief interrogator years later and ... forgave him.

Read the rest here.