Protesters staged a waterboarding Monday outside the Justice Department, calling for a Senate committee to reject attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey because of his reluctance to define the interrogation tactic as torture...

On Monday, about 25 protesters describing themselves as anti-war activists and actors responded with a demonstration of waterboarding that brought a volunteer to retching coughs and tears in less than four minutes.

"I wanted desperately to scream but I couldn't because as soon as I would - water," said Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, a 26-year-old Iranian-American actor from Maryland. "Water would go through the mouth and through the nose."

Set up outside the Justice Department's headquarters, Ebrahimzadeh struggled against his supposed interrogators as they yelled questions and forced him to lie on his back, a cloth over his face, his legs elevated. They poured two gallons of water over his face.

The process was supposed to resemble the process that CIA interrogators are believed to have used on terror detainees until a few years ago. However, Ebrahimzadeh's interrogators put a plastic cage between his face and the cloth to make sure he did not inhale too much water and, potentially, drown or asphyxiate.