Constitutional violation ain't cheap

The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists on Waterboarding, Interrogations

As the secrets about the CIA's interrogation techniques continue to come out, there's new information about the frequency and severity of their use, contradicting an 2007 ABC News report, and a new focus on two private contractors who were apparently directing the brutal sessions that President Obama calls torture.
Top interrogation officials' "waterboarding expertise" was "misrepresented."

According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington: Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.

Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed and implemented the CIA's interrogation program.
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Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites.

Really. It costs $1K a day per man to have specialists supervise simulated drowning? I thought at the very least we were getting a cost effective means of violating our law and ideals. I figured they only needed water, a bucket, a rag, maybe a table, and an amoral cretin or two that was already on the payroll. Turns out you need two guys watching and going "No, with less humanity. Move the hose closer, I can't hear Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave yet."

Both Jessen and Mitchell got the lucrative job because they were the guys who helped tech pilots how to resist....waterboarding torture...if they got caught behind the enemy lines of some nasty, un-American, godless country that didn't believe in freedom or International law, like we do. Turns out though that they misrepresented their medical expertise, had in fact zero experience as interrogators, and conducted waterboarding that was much more dangerous, unsafe, and medically dangerous than what they were allegedly "experts" at.

You know what really hurts? Besides being waterboarded. Our specialized $1K a day torture experts weren't even experts. We got our Constitution pissed on by amateurs. I'm a little disappointed, Bush Administration, I at least thought you would have sprung for some pros to really get some vicious dogs barking at the shame filled & terrified ghost of George Washington.