Waterboarding Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about waterboarding

Waterboarding Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is waterboarding?
A: Waterboarding is a form of water torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning.

Ordinarily, the water is poured intermittently so as to prevent what?
A: Death during torture.

I if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by what?
A: Asphyxia with the sensation of drowning, also called dry drowning.

Besides death, waterboarding can cause what?
A: Extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage.

Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves for how long after the event?
A: Months.

How long can psychological effects can last?
A: For years.

In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with what?
A: Cloth or some other thin material.

Subject is immobilized on their back at an incline of how much?
A: 10 to 20 degrees.

Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing what?
A: An almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive.

The term water board torture appeared in press reports as early as when?
A: 1976.

In late 2007, it was widely reported that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was waterboarding whom?
A: Extrajudicial prisoners.

It was also reported that the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, had done what?
A: Authorized the procedure among enhanced interrogation techniques.

The CIA confirmed having waterboarded what three Al-Qaeda suspects?
A: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in 2002 and 2003.

In August 2002 and March 2003, in its war on terror, the George W. Bush administration, through Jay S. Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, issued what became known as what?
A: The Torture Memos after being leaked in 2004.

These legal opinions argued for a what?
A: A narrow definition of torture under US law.

In 2006, the Bush administration banned torture including waterboarding on detainees, but only for whom?
A: The US Military, not the CIA.

When an amendment by Senator Dianne Feinstein passed that restricted its use on the CIA, what did President Bush do?
A: He vetoed the bill.

In January 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama issued what?
A: A similar ban on the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in interrogations of detainees.

In April 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense refused to say whether waterboarding is what?
A: Still used for training (e.g., SERE) US military personnel in resistance to interrogation.

In December 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a what?
A: A declassified 500 page summary of its still classified 6,700 page report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Detention and Interrogation Program.

What did the report conclud?
A: That "the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) was not effective for acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."

According to the report, the CIA had presented no what?
A: No credible proof that information obtained through waterboarding or the other harsh interrogation methods that the CIA employed prevented any attacks or saved any lives.

There was no evidence that information obtained from the detainees through EIT was not or could not what?
A: Have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.

Where was the term water board first recorded?
A: In a 1976 UPI report: "A Navy spokesman admitted use of the 'water board' torture ... to 'convince each trainee that he won't be able to physically resist what an enemy would do to him.'"

Techniques using forcible drowning to extract information had hitherto been referred to as what?
A: "water torture", "water treatment", "water cure" or simply "torture".

When people use tortures that are old, what do they do?
A: They rename them and alter them a wee bit.

They invent slightly new words to what?
A: To mask the similarities.

Historically in the West, the technique is known to have been used where?
A: In the Spanish Inquisition.

Why has the suffocation of bound prisoners with water been favored?
A: Because, unlike most other torture techniques, it produces no marks on the body.

CIA officers who have subjected themselves to the technique have lasted an average of how long before capitulating?
A: 14 seconds.

According to at least one former CIA official, information retrieved from the waterboarding may not be reliable because a person under such duress may admit to what?
A: Anything, as harsh interrogation techniques lead to false confessions.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a what?
A: A mock execution, which is illegal under international law", says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Who voluntarily subjected himself to a filmed demonstration of waterboarding in 2008, an experience which he recounted in Vanity Fair?
A: Christopher Hitchens.

He was bound on a horizontal board with what over his face?
A: A black mask.

Who carried out the torture?
A: A group of men said to be highly trained in this tactic, who demanded anonymity.

Hitchens was strapped to the board at the chest and feet, face up, and what?
A: Unable to move.

Metal objects were placed in each of his hands, which he could what?
A: Drop if feeling "unbearable stress".

The interrogator did what?
A: Placed a towel over Hitchens' face, and poured water on it.

After 16 seconds, Hitchens did what?
A: Threw the metal objects to the floor and the torturers pulled the mask from his face, allowing him to breathe.

In his article on the topic, he stated what?
A: "Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

Former George W. Bush administration officials Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft have stated what since leaving office?
A: That they do not consider waterboarding to be torture.

On 22 May 2009, radio talk show host Erich "Mancow" Muller subjected himself to waterboarding to prove what?
A: That it is not torture, but changed his mind because of the experience.

On 15 January 2009, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, told his Senate confirmation hearing that waterboarding is what?
A: Torture and the President cannot authorize it.

In a press conference on 30 April, President Obama also stated what?
A: "I believe waterboarding was torture, and it was a mistake."

During World War II, who used waterboarding as a method of torture?
A: Both Japanese military personnel, especially the Kempeitai, and the officers of the Gestapo, the German secret police.

Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to what?
A: Waterboarding by his Japanese captors.

In 2007, Senator John McCain claimed that the United States military hanged Japanese soldiers for what?
A: Waterboarding American prisoners of war during World War II.

A minimal sentence for Japanese soldiers convicted of waterboarding American soldiers was what?
A: 15 years.

Waterboarding was designated as illegal by whom in the Vietnam War?
A: U.S. generals.