Cheney Admits to War Crimes?

ok, i'm a little behind on my blogs, i know this story was from last week, but i thought i would take some time out of my vacation to see what you all think. there is a news interview below with vice president cheney. the story may not be quite as compelling at the lepeau tucson interview at winterhaven, intriguing none-the-less. i heard this interview and then did a little research on waterboarding. according to this npr article, the united states has a history of punishing those who used waterboarding, including charging a japanese officer, yukio asano, with war crimes following wwii and a u.s. soldier who had a picture of him taken while supervising a waterboarding of a vietnamese soldier. asano was sentenced to 15 years hard labor and the u.s. soldier was court martialed.

the question is, does our vp dick cheney admit to approving a punishable crime and should charges be brought against him?



here are some snippets from the npr article on waterboarding:

• "The thing you could not do in torture was injure the body or cause death," Peters says. That was — and still is — what makes waterboarding such an attractive interrogation technique, he says: It causes great physical and mental suffering, yet leaves no marks on the body.
• Waterboarding may be widespread, but it has not been used everywhere. There's no evidence that either the Nazis or the Soviets used the technique, Rejali says. These regimes, he says, weren't concerned about public opinion, and so they often used harsher methods that left permanent scars or killed their victims. If anything, Rejali says, waterboarding has been an interrogation technique preferred by the world's democracies.
• You mean he brought water and poured water down your throat?
  No sir, on my face, until I became unconscious. We were lying that way, with some cloth on my face, and then Yuki poured water on my face continuously.
  And you couldn't breathe?
  No, I could not, and so I, for a time, lost consciousness. I found my consciousness came back again and found Yuki was sitting on my stomach. And then I vomited the water from my stomach, and the consciousness came back again for me.
  Where did the water come out when he sat on your stomach?
  From my mouth and all openings of my face ... and then Yuki would repeat the same treatment and the same procedure to me until I became unconscious again.
  How many times did that happen?
  Around four or five times, from two o'clock up to four o'clock in the afternoon. When I was not able to endure his punishment which I received, I told a lie to Yuki ... . I could not really show anything to Yuki, because I was really lying just to stop the torture.

tourture is tourture if it leaves marks or not. granted, it may not be as horrific as other methods, it is still torture. as important, it is not effective, as you see in the above quote, people will say whatever necessary to stop the torture.

in his book torture and democracy darius rejali reminds us in vivid terms that prisoners will say anything under torture - ibn al-shaykh al-libi, for example, helped establish the since-discredited "connection" between al qaeda and saddam hussein that was cited by president bush, george tenet and colin powell as grounds for invading iraq.