'WATER CURE' - WATER BOARDING IN U.S. HISTORY

U.S. Water Boarding, 1899 Style

By William Loren Katz

History News Network

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Mr. Katz is the author of forty U.S. history books, and has

been affiliated with New York University since 1973. His

website is http://www.williamlkatz.com . His essay draws from his

The Cruel Years (Beacon Press, 2003) and more heavily from

Stuart Creighton Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation": The

American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (Yale

University Press, 1982), a moving account of this country's

first major overseas imperialist venture.

Some high U.S. officials claim not be aware of it, and

Judge Michael Mukasey, the President's choice for attorney

general, prefers to equivocate, but water boarding has long

been a form of torture that causes excruciating pain and

can lead to death. It forces water into prisoner's lungs,

usually over and over again. The Spanish Inquisition in the

late 1400s used this torture to uncover and punish

heretics, and then in the early 1500s Spain's inquisitors

carried it overseas to root out heresy in the New World. It

reappeared during the witch hysteria. Women accused of

sorcery were "dunked" and held under water to see if they

were witches.

In World War II Japan and Germany routinely used water

boarding on prisoners. In Viet Nam U.S. forces held bound

Viet Cong captives and "sympathizers" upside down in

barrels of water. Water boarding also has been associated

with the Khmer Rouge.

An extensive record of its use by the United States land

forces exists in the records of the invasion and occupation

of the Philippines that began in 1898. As the U.S.

encountered armed resistance by the liberation army of

Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo, and sank into a 12-year

quagmire on the archipelago, U.S. officers routinely

resorted to what they called "the water cure." Professor

Miller's study of the Philippine war reveals this sordid

story through Congressional testimony, letters from

soldiers, court martial hearings, words of critics and

defenders, and newspaper accounts. The pro-imperialist

media of the day justified the "water cure" as necessary to

gain information; the anti-imperialist media denounced its

use by the U.S or any other civilized nation.

Fresh from their recent victories in the Indian wars, the

Philippine invasion of 1898 began with a war whoop. U.S.

forces landed in the Philippines in 1898 led by American

officers such Pershing, Lawton, Smith, Shafter, Otis,

Merritt, and Chafee, who had fought "treacherous redskins."

At least one officer had taken part in the infamous 1891

massacre of 350 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded

Knee. A U.S. media that had supported the Army's brutal

Indian campaigns rhapsodized about this new opportunity for

distant racial warfare. The influential San Francisco

Argonaut spoke candidly: "We do not want the Filipinos. We

want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but

unfortunately they are infested with Filipinos. There are

many millions there, and it is to be feared their

extinction will be slow." The paper's solution was to

recommend several unusually cruel methods of torture it

believed "would impress the Malay mind."

President William McKinley dispatched Admiral Dewey to the

Philippines with a pledge to bestow civilization and

Christianity on its people, and promise eventual

independence. Perhaps he was unaware that most Filipinos

were Catholics. Perhaps he did not know that General

Aguinaldo and his 40,000 troops were poised to remove Spain

from the islands. Dewey supplied Aguinaldo with weapons and

encouraged him, but that soon changed.

From the White House and the U.S. high command to field

officers and lowly enlistees the message became "these

people are not civilized" and the United States had

embarked on a glorious overseas adventure against

"savages." Officers and enlisted men - and the media --were

encouraged to see the conflict through a "white

superiority" lens, much as they viewed their victories over

Native Americans and African Americans. The Philippine

occupation unfolded at the high tide of American

segregation, lynching, and a triumphant white supremacy

ideology.

U.S. officers ordered massacres of entire villages and

conducted a host of other shameful atrocities as the

Philippine quagmire dragged on for more than a decade. "A

white man seems to forget that he is human," wrote a white

soldier from the Philippines.

Atrocities abounded. To produce "a demoralized and obedient

population" in Batangas, General Franklin Bell ordered the

destruction of "humans, crops, food stores, domestic

animals, houses and boats." He became known as the

"butcher" of Batangas. General Jacob Smith, who had been

wounded fighting at Wounded Knee, said his overseas

campaigns were "worse than fighting Indians." He promised

to turn Samar province into a "howling wilderness." Smith

defined the enemy as anyone "ten years and up" and issued

these instructions to Marine Commander Tony Waller: "I want

no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you

kill and burn the better it will please me." He became

known as "Howling Jake" Smith.

The "water cure" was probably first instituted when U.S.

forces encountered local resistance. Professor Miller

states that General Frederick Funston in 1901 may have used

it to capture the Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo. A New

York World article described the "water cure" as forcing

"water with handfuls of salt thrown in to make it more

efficacious, is forced down the throats of patients until

their bodies become distended to the point of bursting

...." This may have been only one on the versions used.

The water cure became front-page news when William Howard

Taft, appointed U.S. Governor of the Philippines, testified

under oath before Congress and let the cat out of the bag.

The "so called water cure," he admitted, was used "on some

occasions to extract information." The Arena, an opposition

paper, called his words "a most humiliating admission that

should strike horror in the mind of every American." Around

the same time as Taft's admission a soldier boasted in a

letter made public that he had used the water cure on 160

people and only 26 had survived. The man was compelled by

the War Department to retract his damaging confession. But

then another officer stated the "water cure" was being

widely used when he reported, "the problem of the 'water

cure' is in knowing how to apply it." Such statements leave

unclear how often the form of torture was used for

interrogation and how often it became a way to exhibit

racial animosity or display contempt.

During a triumphal U.S. speaking tour General Frederick

Funston, bearing a Congressional Medal of Honor and

harboring political ambitions, bellicosely promoted total

war. In Chicago he boasted of sentencing 35 suspects to

death without trial and enthusiastically endorsed torture

and civilian massacres. He even publicly suggested that

anti-war protestors be dragged out of their homes and

lynched.

Funston's words met far more applause than criticism. In

San Francisco he suggested that the editor of a noted anti-

imperialist paper "ought to be strung up to the nearest

lamppost." At a banquet in the city he called Filipinos

"unruly savages" and (now) claimed he had personally killed

fifty prisoners without trial. Captain Edmond Boltwood, an

officer under Funston, confirmed that the general had

personally administered the water cure to captives, and had

told his troops "to take no prisoners."

President Theodore Roosevelt reprimanded Funston and

ordered him to cease his inflammatory rhetoric. Facing a

political challenge from General Nelson Miles based in the

Philippines, TR, who rode into the White House on his

heroic exploits at San Juan Hill, did not intend to nourish

more competition. The President privately assured a friend

the water cure was "an old Filipino method of mild torture"

and claimed when Americans administered it "no body was

seriously damaged." But publicly TR was silent about the

"water cure."

In an article, "The 'Water Cure' from a Missionary Point of

View," Reverend Homer Stunz justified the technique. It was

not torture, he said, since the victim could stop it any

time by revealing what his interrogators wanted to know.

Besides, he insisted, it was only applied to "spies." The

missionary also justified instances of torture by pointing

out that U.S. soldiers "in lonely and remote bamboo

jungles" faced stressful conditions.

Mark Twain, a leading anti-imperialist voice, offered this

view of the water cure:

"Funston's example has bred many imitators, and many

ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of

Filipinos by the awful 'water- cure,' for instance, to make

them confess -- what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know

which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a

man confesses anything that is required of him, true or

false, and his evidence is worthless. Yet upon such

evidence American officers have actually -- but you know

about those atrocities which the War Office has been hiding

a year or two...."

U.S. military trials for what are now known as war crimes

all resulted in convictions. Waller was acquitted because

he followed the orders of Smith, and later retired with two

stars. "Howling Jake" Smith was convicted, but he returned

to a tumultuous citizens' welcome in San Francisco. When

the convicted U.S. war criminals received only slaps-on-

the-wrist U.S. prestige abroad sunk to new lows.

A San Francisco park was named after General Funston. TR

appointed General Bell of Batangas infamy as his chief of

staff. And the President continued to wave the banner of

aggressive imperialism. In 1903 he flagrantly seized a

broad swath of Columbia's Isthmus of Panama so he could

link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans under U.S. control.

This boosted his popularity and splintered the anti-

imperialist movement. TR also worked to undermine efforts

to grant the Philippines independence, which finally took

place after World War II.

TR easily won a return to the White House in 1904, and in

1908 he chose Taft as his successor. By the time Taft left

the White House in 1913, military resistance in the

Philippines had ended, and so presumably had the "water

cure." TR had become a Mount Rushmore-size American icon.

The "water cure" was accepted as a necessary embarrassment

in wartime. Appeals to muscular patriotism had exonerated

the "water cure" and reduced a crime of torture to a

misdemeanor. Is the U.S. headed the same way in 2007?

More at:

http://www.hnn.us/articles/44411.html

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