05-25-2009, 01:06 PM
Quote:Yes. But given that the Red Cross does not, AFAIK, teach classes at the local Y in torture survival, it might just be hard to find anyone who has had such training *and* is free to speak of it. OTOH, there may just not be anyone like that at all.The Red Cross doesn't, but the military does: the SERE program trains soldiers to resist torture, or at least to survive in captivity. The accounts I have read from program graduates and trainers have been split on the issue of what is and isn't torture, or whether it should be used. But they're all pretty consistent in saying that they cracked after waterboarding, and that it was the worst (or near-worst) experience of their lives. It is also likely that the 'training' version of waterboarding is less extreme than what might be used in an actual interrogation, although proving that would likely involve seeing the videos that were (whoops!) destroyed.
There may be more intensive programs, whose graduates are forbidden from discussing the results, I don't know. But we can at least say that even elite soldiers, in the SERE training situation, do not seem to be able to resist waterboarding.
-Jester