The US administration is responding to allegation of torturing prisoners, by admitting the actions but claiming they are not torture. Torture is defined under the International Convention Against Torture as:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession..."
The UN Committee Against Torture has already condemned the use of waterboarding as constituting torture or cruel or degrading treatment, and a violation of the Convention against Torture, to which the US is a part.
Waterboarding, called submarino in Spanish, is a common torture technique. The victim has their face introduced in water until he is almost close to drowning.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/15847911.htm
McClatchy News Wire
Wed, Oct. 25, 2006
Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (MCT) - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed
that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al Qaida suspects
to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding,"
which creates a sensation of drowning.
Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding
as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney
said at one point in an interview.
Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative
radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that
the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary
to fight terrorism.
The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many
experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane
and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties
that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often
provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their
interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.
Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina have said that a law Bush signed last month prohibits
water-boarding. The three are the sponsors of the Military Commissions Act,
which authorized the administration to continue its interrogations of enemy
combatants.
Graham, a military lawyer who serves in the Air Force Reserve, reaffirmed
that view in an interview last week with McClatchy Newspapers.
"Water-boarding, in my opinion, would cause extreme physical and psychological
pain and suffering, and it very much could run afoul of the War Crimes Act,"
he said, referring to a 1996 law. "It could very much open people up to
prosecution under the War Crimes Act, as well as be a violation of the
Detainees Treatment Act."
A revised U.S. Army Field Manual published last month bans water-boarding
as "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."
"There is a disconnect between the president and the vice president
and on the other side leading proponents from their own party and
leading experts on the laws of war," said Neal Sonnett, the chairman of
the American Bar Association's Task Force on Enemy Combatants.
The radio interview Tuesday was the first time that a senior
Bush administration official has confirmed that U.S. interrogators
used water-boarding against important al Qaida suspects, including Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, and turned over to the CIA.
Water-boarding means holding a person's head under water or pouring water
on cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth to simulate drowning
until the subject agrees to talk or confess.
In an interview on Tuesday, Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D.,
told Cheney that listeners had asked him to "let the vice president know
that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it
saves American lives."
"Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face,
would you agree?" Hennen said.
"I do agree," Cheney replied, according to a transcript of the interview
released Wednesday. "And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with
respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be
able to secure the nation."
Cheney added that Mohammed had provided "enormously valuable information
about how many (al Qaida members) there are, about how they plan, what their
training processes are and so forth. We've learned a lot. We need to be able
to continue that."
"Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?"
asked Hennen.
"It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized
as being the vice president 'for torture.' We don't torture. That's not
what we're involved in," Cheney replied. "We live up to our obligations
in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is,
you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we
need to be able to do that."
Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney had confirmed
that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.
"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program
without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or
may not be techniques or methods of questioning."
The interview transcript was posted on the White House Web site
( whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/ ).
CIA spokeswoman Michelle Neff said, "While we do not discuss specific
interrogation methods, the techniques we use have been reviewed by the
Department of Justice and are in keeping with our laws and treaty obligations.
We neither conduct nor condone torture."
/McClatchy correspondents James Rosen and Marisa Taylor contributed to
this report./
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