We’ve all seen it in the movies. The bad guy wants to get someone to spill their guts, so he grabs them by the hair and dunks their head underwater. It usually seems to work. Although I cannot – off the top of my head – recall whether Jack Bauer has ever used the technique, one thing is clear: The United States has, and still does.

But while Hollywood has highlighted many a success resulting from the popular head submersion tactic, it is uncertain whether its use in the real world has reaped or will reap the same benefit. A more important question being asked is: Does it constitute torture?

The method used in real life, called “waterboarding,” is in fact a bit more complex than forcefully dunking someone’s head underwater. An ABC News article from November 2005 illustrated the use of the technique, as well as a handful of others employed by the Central Intelligence Agency on al-Qaida prisoners after Sept. 11.

According to the CIA, waterboarding is used when a subject “is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.”

The issue has quickly made its way into the national spotlight as Congress decides whether Bush nominee Michael Mukasey will be Alberto Gonzales’ replacement as attorney general. As it looks now, he will be, however the hopeful Mukasey has undergone a bit of harsh interrogation of his own, as he has refused to categorize the use of waterboarding as unlawful torture.

Despite being almost wholly subjective, torture has been the topic of many international treaties, most notably the Geneva Convention, which the United States pays about as much attention to as its president did to his professors during college.

Other “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” outlined in the article include the open-handed face and belly slap as well as forcing a prisoner to stand for a prolonged period of time in his cell, often naked amid controlled 50-degree temperatures while occasionally being sprayed with icy water and, of course, let’s not forget the always-effective shaking of the prisoner by the scruff of his neck.

Regardless of how someone might feel about the issue, many of these techniques – as well as many others that have since been banned in the U.S. or elsewhere – have almost certainly aided in preventing similar devastation than that which occurred six years ago.

Of course, forceful interrogation can always have the opposite-desired effect, in which the prisoner tells the questioner exactly what he wants to hear in hopes of ending his agony. This famously occurred when, just prior to President George W. Bush’s insistent assertions of connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to justify invading Iraq, an alleged al-Qaida prisoner confessed after a brief waterboarding bout to not only meeting with Hussein, but to smoking the peace pipe with him as well.

The prisoner, who was later released after it was discovered he was not in fact al-Qaida but rather simply a man with a beard, has not returned calls for comment.

Ben Zenitsky is a senior in journalism. He can be reached at [email protected].