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David B. Offer 01/15/2008

"I assure the American people that we were within the law and we don't torture," Bush says.

Vice President Dick Cheney says it's "a no brainer" to use some form of simulated drowning to question terror suspects.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says he's not sure what waterboarding is, if it's torture, or if it's illegal.

Bush, Cheney and Mukasey should consider the Spanish Inquisition.

The Inquisition had rules on how to torture prisoners and it kept detailed records.

"The records were carefully maintained," according to David Gitlitz, a professor at the University of Rhode Island. Gitlitz, my longtime friend, is an internationally respected scholar who has written many books and articles about the Inquisition.

"One difference between the Inquisition and what goes on at Guantanamo is that the Inquisition didn't destroy its tapes," Gitlitz said. "They are in the archives for people to read."

Gitlitz and his wife, Linda Davidson, also a scholar and author at URI, have done their reading. Over a period of 30 years, they have spent months in the national archives of Spain and Mexico researching the carefully preserved original Inquisition documents.

If Mukasey does not know what waterboarding is, it's because he has not tried to find out.

Records show that the Inquisition used three methods of torture: The prisoner could be hung by his wrists from a pulley, repeatedly hoisted and dropped. He could be tied to a rack and stretched.

Or he could be waterboarded.

"The Spanish Inquisition didn't invent any of these systems of torture but they systematized them," Gitlitz said.

Waterboarding was used in medieval times and was used by the Inquisition for more than 350 years -- from about 1478 to 1834 -- both in Spain and Mexico.

Henry Kamen, a respected historian, described waterboarding in his book, "The Spanish Inquisition."

"He was tied down on a rack. His mouth was kept forcibly open and a toca or linen cloth was put down his throat to conduct water poured slowly from a jar. The severity of the torture varied with the number of jars of water used."

The Inquisition used torture in about 20 percent of the cases, Gitlitz told me. It was not used more often because even in those times "there was debate about whether testimony elicited under duress was credible," Gitlitz said.

Confessions generated by torture were generally disregarded unless other evidence corroborated them.

There was always a doctor present; the historic records show that many times the doctors made the inquisitors stop.

"There are a lot of false ideas about the Inquisition, but these facts are pretty straightforward," Gitlitz said.

"I'm astounded that well-educated leaders who have a sense of history -- or whose staff do -- or who have access to this kind of material think waterboarding is so novel," Gitlitz said.

It took him about five minutes to find two books with detailed description if what went on in Inquisition days.

More modern records, presumably available to Bush and Mukasey, would describe the findings of the U.S. military commission that prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners during World War II, according to Human Rights Watch.

In 1968, A U.S. soldier was court-martialed for waterboarding a Vietnamese prisoner.

"The Bush administration continues to astonish," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International.

Cox noted that the State Department has called waterboarding torture when other countries do it, "yet in President Bush's legal wonderland, waterboarding is renamed 'an enhanced interrogation technique.'"

Gitlitz pulled a second book about the Inquisition from his library:

The author, Cecil Roth, also a well-regarded scholar, wrote:

"The prisoner was fastened almost naked on sort of board, his head lower than his feet, and the limbs bound to the side pieces with astonishing tightness," Roth wrote.

"The mouth was forced open and a strip of linen was inserted into the gullet. Through this, water was poured from a jar, obstructing the throat and nostrils and producing a state of semi-suffocation. The process was repeated time after time."

Enhanced interrogation technique, indeed.

"It's shocking and it's shameful," Gitlitz said.

"It violates human rights -- something the Inquisition was not particularly interested in," Gitlitz said.

"I think it's criminal for the United States to squander our military, financial capital and human capital, but it's tragic for us to squander our moral capital," he said.

Bush won't say if he thinks waterboarding is torture.

"I don't want to talk about techniques," he said.

He didn't talk about moral capital.

David B. Offer is the retired executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel. E-mail davidboffer@hotmail.com.

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