Ramesh states in his post regarding the difference between waterboarding done in SERE training that our military undergoes, and the waterboarding used in the enhanced interrogations of KSM and other terrorists: “the trainee’s greater confidence he will survive the exercise makes a big difference.”

According to the International Red Cross documents that were recently released, which quote KSM and other detainees describing their interrogations, KSM says he told by his interrogators that he would not die. With the release of the OLC memos, we know why: one of the red lines that, if crossed, would have made the techniques torture under US law was whether the detainees thought they were in danger of death. That is why they were told specifically they would not die. So both the trainee and detainee know they will survive.