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In his book, "Decision Points," Bush asserts that he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency whether he would support the agency's waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind.
"Damn right," Bush says that he said.
The Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith avers that a source close to Bush says he would have done the same thing again "to save lives," though there's been no proof produced that the torture technique has.
"Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation techniques - a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods - after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal," Smith notes.
In February, Vice president Dick Cheney said that he personally "was a big supporter of waterboarding."
Bush's admission could have international consequences for human rights.
"President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. have both said waterboarding is an act of torture proscribed by international law, a viewpoint supported by a handful of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and opposed by other Republicans," Smith notes. "But the Obama administration has not sought to punish former Bush administration officials for approving it.
"The 26-year-old United Nations Convention Against Torture requires that all parties to it seek to enforce its provisions, even for acts committed elsewhere," he adds. "That provision, known as universal jurisdiction, has been cited in the past by prosecutors in Spain and Belgium to justify investigations of acts by foreign officials. But no such trials have occurred in foreign courts."
Bush's new book is to be released next Tuesday.
Pretty old story, but pretty interesting, of 9 days ago.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/damn-right-personally-ordered-waterboarding-bush/
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.
After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war.
After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
So, yeah, Bush admitted to have used a torture method that isn't exactly very effective, and where Japanese were charged for after WW II.
So, what's your opinion on this?
