Another No-Brainer

The latest (former) Bush administration official to independently confirm that the United States waterboards prisoners is none other than Mr. John Yoo— author of the infamous August 2002 Office of Legal Counsel torture memo directing that the UN Convention Against Torture should not limit US conduct 'even if certain interrogation methods being contemplated amounted to torture'.

Below is an exchange from The Spectator, a British weekly, between Yoo and journalist Alasdair Palmer:

Yoo: Does water-boarding inflict serious pain? I doubt that the CIA thinks that it does ... or that it is going to stop using the technique, if the stakes are high enough.

AP: So despite the [Detainee Treatment Act], the old tactics will be available?

Yoo: I think so. And more important, so do they ...

Yoo joins Dick Cheney (Vice President for Torture) and Porter Goss (Director for Torture) in revealing waterboarding as a tactic used by the CIA. In March 2005, then CIA Director Porter Goss labelled it a “professional interrogation technique”. In October 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney also confirmed that waterboarding is one of the CIA’s “alternative set of procedures.” Using it on suspected terrorists, he said, is a “no-brainer”.