Waterboarding and Inquistion
David M. Gitlitz
February 9, 2008
Why has the Bush administration been dancing around the question of
whether waterboarding is
torture?
Waterboarding was one of the most common tortures employed by the Spanish
Inquisition for the
first half of its 450-year-long history (circa 1480-1834). This has never
been a secret. It is
attested to by reams of do***ents - letters, debates, manuals of
instruction and copious
records of trials that include verbatim accounts of the torture sessions
themselves - in the
Historical Archives of Spain and Mexico, in which I have worked for the
last 30 years. The
information about inquisitorial waterboarding has also been available to
the English-reading
general public since publication of H.C. Lea’s A History of the
Inquisition, the last volume of
which appeared a hundred years ago this year.
Here is Lea’s description of the inquisitorial waterboarding:
"The patient was placed on an escalera or potro - a kind of trestle, with
sharp-edged rungs
across it like a ladder. It slanted so that the head was lower than the
feet and, at the lower
end was a depression in which the head sank, while an iron band around the
forehead or throat
kept it immovable. A bostezo, or iron prong, distended the mouth, a toca,
or strip of linen,
was thrust down the throat to conduct water trickling slowly from a jarra
or jar, holding
usually a little more than a quart. The patient gasped and felt he was
suffocating, and at
intervals, the toca was withdrawn and he was adjured to tell the truth.
The severity of the
infliction was measured by the number of jars consumed, sometimes reaching
to six or eight."
The Spanish Inquisition, unlike many American lawmakers and members of the
executive branch,
did not waffle about labeling waterboarding a torture. Waterboarding was
not invented in Spain:
Since the middle of the 13th Century it had been used by European civil
and ecclesiastical
courts, particularly the Papal Inquisition, in Rome. In Spain no one
voiced doubts, as did
Michael Mukasey during his October confirmation hearings for U.S. attorney
general, and at a
hearing just the other day, about whether waterboarding might not
technically be torture.
President Bush, on the other hand, has no doubts at all. Unlike his
nominee, he spoke with
inquisitor-like certainty when he proclaimed that our physically coercive
techniques "are safe,
they are lawful and they are necessary." He apparently sees no
contradiction in simultaneously
insisting that these "classified interrogation procedures" be conducted
offshore so as to
remove them from the jurisdiction and safeguards of the American judicial
system.
The Spanish Inquisition guaranteed to the accused many of the legal
protections that the
current administration has worked so hard to sweep under the rug. Within
the context of their
times the Inquisition’s stance, succinctly laid out in its 1561 Manual of
Instruction to
Inquisitors, was remarkable. Both the prosecuting and court-appointed
defense attorneys had
access to the substance of all of the testimonies relating to the accused.
The accused could
disqualify the testimony of anyone whom he or she could prove had animus
against them.
Inquisitors had to weigh the full arguments of the defense and the
prosecution before ordering
a torture session. The order required a unanimous vote of the judges. If
the defense attorney
didn’t accept the decision, he could appeal the ruling to the
Inquisition’s Supreme Council
(though in practice they rarely did).
Gathered in the torture chamber itself were the inquisitors, a bishop’s
representative, and a
recording secretary adept at speedwriting, which was the videotaping of
its day. The attending
doctor could rule the accused unfit to be tortured, and could order the
procedure stopped at
any time. Once the accused was brought into the torture chamber, he was
offered several chances
- the average seems to have been about six- to make full voluntary
confession. Fear in the
presence of imminent pain was generally enough to loosen the accused
person’s tongue. It was
only when fear alone did not work that torture was applied, with each step
of the procedure,
each jar of water and turn of the winch, each question and each choked-out
answer, duly noted
by the recording secretary. None of the participants ever destroyed those
do***ents out of fear
of embarrassment or indictment for their actions. Nor did their bosses.
The original recordings
were archived, and after 500 years are still available.
I am not praising the Spanish Inquisition. I know enough about the real
Inquisition - not the
cartoon version of Monty Python nor the sensationalist horrors of the
Black Legend - to know
that the Inquisition was heinous in almost every way. Though debates raged
then and still rage
among scholars about the reliability of the information elicited by these
procedures, there is
no disagreement about one fact: Waterboarding was torture. That was its
intent, and that, in
conjunction with a variety of other torments, was how the Spanish
inquisitors used it. Even
today popular imagination condemns them for it. For the United States to
adopt even one of the
Inquisition’s torture techniques exposes us, rightly, to moral
condemnation.
The United States has long been a beacon to the world for its ethical
principles (even when
sometimes these have been honored in the breach). Equal treatment under
the law. Habeas corpus.
Free and open discussion informed by access to information and a free
press. Checks and
balances to ensure that these rights are protected.
That the Bush-Cheney administration has squandered our human and material
resources in this
so-called war against terror is a calamity that will affect us for
decades. But that they have
blown away our moral capital, that they have compromised the principles
that define us as a
nation, that is a tragedy.
David M. Gitlitz is a professor of Hispanic studies at the University of
Rhode Island.
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