WASHINGTON — For years, the U.S. military used waterboarding, a centuries-old torture technique, to train American troops to resist interrogation if captured. The military decided waterboarding “provided no instructional or training benefit to the student,” Thomas Crosson, a Department of Defense spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. But if a student taps out, they risk failing the training, former students told HuffPost. The problem with waterboarding SERE students was that too many trainees broke, said James Mitchell, a psychologist who was deeply involved in SERE and later reverse-engineered it to develop the CIA’s torture program. “We thought it was too effective,” Mitchell wrote in a 2016 book defending his role in the CIA torture program.

Source: Huffington Post March 29, 2018 18:56 UTC