David Corn, at his website, provides this painting done by a Cambodian man who experienced the torture, along with some photos of an actual device, now in a museum, that was used by the Khmer Rouge.

Torture lite? I don’t think so. Neither does Corn’s correspondent, Jonah Blank:

The crux of the issue before Congress can be boiled down to a simple question: Is waterboarding torture? Anybody who considers this practice to be “torture lite” or merely a “tough technique” might want to take a trip to Phnom Penh. The Khymer Rouge were adept at torture, and there was nothing “lite” about their methods. …

Bottom line: Not only do waterboarding and the other types of torture currently being debated put us in company with the most vile regimes of the past half-century; they’re also designed specifically to generate a (usually false) confession, not to obtain genuinely actionable intel. This isn’t a matter of sacrificing moral values to keep us safe; it’s sacrificing moral values for no purpose whatsoever.