Since I’ve been following our political leaders’ intense discussion about the use of waterboarding as a means to obtain intelligence from enemy combatants we capture, I can not resist expressing an opinion. Many people ask me, “What is this argument about waterboarding? Is it effective?”

As a veteran of the Marine Corps who has been experienced the technique under training conditions. I can assure readers the practice of waterboarding is not just a George Bush idea and has been used by Democrat and Republican presidents stretching back to at least the Korean War.

Granted, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, which established the Rules of Warfare between warring nations, military captives are required to only give their name, rank, serial number and date of birth. Because of the need for military intelligence, no nation stops interrogations at that point.

To obtain information from captives, military commanders use interrogation methods that gradually lead to more enhanced techniques. Waterboarding becomes one of the most drastic measures used to extract information from enemy combatants.

Most military men and women who have attended survivor schools receive first-hand knowledge and experience in interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

During late fall in 1964, a group of us from Camp Pendleton, Calif., attended the Marine Corps Survivor School in the Sierra Mountains for about a month. Besides receiving classroom training in surviving after being captured, we were taught to look for ways to escape captivity and how to evade capture. The final 10 days we were divided into teams and dropped off at different points in the mountains. We had to scavenge for our own food and to evade the aggressor forces. For safety reasons, we were issued a radio.

We were all eventually captured and individually interrogated. First, in an effort to gain our confidence and cooperation, we were offered cigarettes, chocolate bars and other forms of bribery. Eventually, the interrogation methods were intensified to break us down.

Already weak from physical exhaustion and lack of sufficient food from evading for a week,  we were humiliated in ways that civilians would find appalling. Our team was forced to strip naked and lay prone in a very cold mountain stream. Those of us who didn’t break were put in small cages dug into the frozen ground, given a thin blanket and told we would die there. Of course, school leaders closely monitored the technique.

At some point, the hard core survivors were taken into a shed and were water- boarded. The technique is simple, requiring an observer and two others. While those students who had already broken down watched, we were tied to the floor on our backs and a towel was tightly held over our nose and mouth. Water was then poured over the towel, giving the person a sensation of drowning. We all broke down!

Waterboarding became widely used during the Vietnam War through the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years. And I’m sure all three were aware of the technique.

Because enhanced interrogations take time and need to be done by intelligence experts, infantry units didn’t mess with them. If our mission and time allowed we’d get whatever information we could by using an interpreter. We’d send the prisoners to the rear areas as soon as possible.

It was there where the experts used intensified methods of interrogations. The purpose, of course, was to gain intelligence to save American lives. On one occasion, I did observe waterboarding being used on a North Vietnamese officer. It was effective. When the officer broke down, the technique immediately ceased and questioning resumed.

Waterboarding, in my opinion, is not torture, but the technique should be used as a last resort. We live in a dangerous world where terrorists do not wear uniforms or have established governments. They cowardly seek to kill women and children and to destroy democracies. If Americans are captured by terrorist organizations, they can expect the worst forms of torture including death. Even if we stop waterboarding for reasons associated with American values, the enemies we fight will not.

Ceasing all forms of enhanced interrogations is one thing, but making the techniques a partisan political issue is yet another. Ask the families of the 9/11 victims what they think. The majority will say, “We don’t care how you get the truth! We want justice!”  If waterboarding saves a single American life, the technique is justified.