What Makes Waterboarding Torture?

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Why Waterboarding is Torture
The US Reservations of the UN Convention against Torture defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information from a person.” Waterboarding fits into this definition very well. In the “How to Do It” article waterboarding is described as filling up the upper respiratory system with water causing both physical and mental pain. This causes the person being tortured to feel like they are drowning without them actually dying from the drowning. For the person experiencing it, it may even be worse because the article states that “his sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown,” so it is never ending. So even though the person is not in real physical danger, the panic caused by this method of interrogation causes both physical suffering and great mental suffering. In the definition of torture it says it is torture whether it causes physical or mental suffering, and water boarding does both!
The Fourth Geneva Convention states that...

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