Maxine Kumin's Poem 'Waterboarding'

"You're thinking summer, theme parks... Wrong. Waterboarding is when they tie you to a bench face down head extending unsupported, and then they tip you little by little into filthy ruinous liquid, eyes ears mouth until you vomit drowning and after two or three reps you'll talk, you'll say anything, denounce anyone, your highschool teacher, the imam, your five brothers” (Kumin). As stated above, Maxine Kumin describes a significant military interrogation technique in his poem “Waterboarding.” The US is constantly trying to combat war with terrorists and stay several steps ahead of their cruel plans. Winning wars is not only about a strong defense. A strong offense is also key to succeed. The central focus of the offensive strategy is to
Interrogation is a way to keep America safe by saving the lives of innocent citizens. The lawful authority given to the intelligence and military officers is derived from the constitution in article two. Congress gave official permission to "all necessary and appropriate forces" for the sole purpose of protecting the lives of Americans. As a result of this, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was established. The Terrorist Surveillance Program allows the tracking of cell-phone calls and other contacts of members of the Al-Qaeda group with people in the US. This program used interrogation on suspected terrorists once other attempts to extract information did not succeed. Their methods were legally justified and necessary to protect Americans. When dealing with the al-Qaeda terrorists after 9/11, the US government and military devoted their attention to obtaining their secrets, instead of telling them ours. Their methods prevented the repetition of that attack for over seven and a half years. There are always costs to decisions made, but when involving the safety of Americans, interrogation is imperative (Cheney "Enhanced Interrogation Methods”). Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave his insight on interrogation: "To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives.... To completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future ...
George Tenet, the previous CIA chief who planned the interrogation of suspected terrorists after 9/11, ensures that enhanced interrogation is not torture, but merely an efficient way to extract information from suspects of terrorism. He said that enhanced interrogation techniques, like mimicked suffocation and drowning, were legitimized, justified, and worked. "I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency set up together have possessed the capacity to let us know." Mr. Tenent said that in special cases harsher techniques are necessary to get certain information, such as names of acquaintances taking part in activities like the blowing up of apartments and flying into airports to cause death and devastation to the people and government of the US. Some of these disasters can be stopped, though, when we extract information from the people involved. For example, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the September 11 planner, was caught in an assault in Pakistan in March 2003. Catching terrorists like Khalid can stop them from further plans of harm directed towards America and its citizens