bush admits, "we torture" --democrats stay silent (tags)
The White House publicly acknowledged on Wednesday that President Bush has authorized the use of waterboarding, and that he may do so again in the future. The statements amount to an open admission of criminal activity on the part of the US government. The acknowledgement from White House deputy spokesman Tony Fratto came a day after testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden before the Senate Intelligence Committee. For the first time, Hayden officially stated that the Bush administration had used waterboarding on three prisoners in 2002 and 2003. Waterboarding is a form of torture used since the Spanish Inquisition. It involves pouring water over a prisoner’s head to cause drowning, and has been prosecuted as torture by the United States government in the past. While the Bush administration is now stretching language and credulity to claim that it should not be categorized as torture, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, acknowledged on Wednesday that “taken to its extreme, [the consequences of waterboarding] could be death; you could drown someone.”