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(U-WIRE) BATON ROUGE, La. – Dinah PoKempner said “waterboarding” might sound like a fun sport you could do at the beach.

But PoKempner said the word is just a euphemism for a torture practice advocated by the U.S. government.

“Now instead of waterboarding, I said using water to repeatedly bring a bound and helpless human being to the point of asphyxiation causing the sensation of imminent death, I don’t think you’d find it as playful or obscure,” PoKempner poised.

PoKempner, general counsel for Human Rights Watch, spoke Friday at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center. She was the keynote speaker of the Human Rights Symposium hosted by the International Law Society.

The Human Rights Watch is the nation’s largest human rights organization and works to protect the rights of victims worldwide.

Jack Weiss, Law Center chancellor, described PoKempner as one of the foremost authorities concerning international human rights law. Weiss said her knowledge “is second to none in this area.”

PoKempner said the discourse surrounding torture is eroding, but the qualifications for torture stay the same. She said names like “waterboarding” are used to reduce concern for these types of practices.

“Fanciful and euphemistic names are attached to procedures that are intended to produce agony,” PoKempner said.

Places such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison have been investigated for human rights violations. PoKempner said the pictures from these two places are outrageous images that degrade those prisoners.

PoKempner said the government attempts to make the detainees at these prisons seem inaccessible and invisible.

“And that way, it sounds more credible, and leaders can tell us that they’re rounding up the worst of the worst,” PoKempner said. “Even though it becomes clear over time that mostly we’ve been detaining the unlucky and the hapless and sometimes just the slowest guys on the battlefront.”

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are kept from having lawyers or courts to appeal to, PoKempner said. She said almost all detainees are not allowed to contact families because it may persuade the prisoner to be cooperative instead of defiant.

PoKempner said even minors have their status as children ignored or considered irrelevant. She said the government recently argued that the military commission’s main theory is “you could execute 7-year-olds if they were unlawful enemy combatants.”

Past terrorist attacks have stressed that the norm for torture has exceptions, according to PoKempner. Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, said that following the Sept. 11 attacks, the “‘gloves came off.’”

PoKempner said Black basically meant the United States was going to have to fight beyond the rules and statutes to inflict pain upon enemies. She said this has threatened the normal discourse for torture.

The Bush administration determined that domestic human rights laws did not apply to government officials in respects to the treatment of foreign detainees. PoKempner said lawyers for the administration argued the president had power as commander-in-chief that would put him above constitutional law in matters of national security.

PoKempner said in a memo written by John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general, the president could torture someone if he felt like it.

“If the president thought it was necessary to torture the terrorist’s innocent child by crushing his testicles, no law would necessarily impede him.” PoKempner said of the memo. “It would depend on why the president thinks he needs to do that.”

PoKempner said she thinks certain government officials see waterboarding as the key to knocking down resistance for questionable interrogation tactics. She said if this technique is legalized, then other types of torture such as sleep deprivation and forced positions will be considered much less threatening.

There are two types of prevention against the deterioration of discourse surrounding torture, PoKempner said. She said her speech involves exposing the issue, which is one strategy. She said reframing the issue is another strategy.

“John McCain had a very powerful and empowering message when he said, ‘It’s not about them, it’s about us,’” PoKempner said. “We’ve actually prosecuted terrorism very successfully. We’ve done a lot of prevention, and we’ve done it without having to completely throw out our criminal justice system.”

President Bush vetoed a bill this past Saturday that would ban the CIA from using waterboarding as an interrogation technique. PoKempner said this issue is the latest attack against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

“It’s a phenomenon that’s thrown the human rights world and other people into despair,” PoKempner said.