Apparently the Spanish Inquisition used waterboarding, and there are period illustrations of it. Search for “Tormento Del Agua” on this page, to see one. Here’s another one.
So it’s a favorite of the Spanish Inquisition as well as the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, the Nazis, the Viet Cong, Hirohito’s Japan, Stalin’s Russia, and… and the Bush Administration.
Bush is Godwin’s President. You can barely write a truthful sentence about his administration and its actions without finding yourself comparing it to the acts of an infamous dictator.