Did White House OK Waterboarding?
 Saturday, October 18th, 2008  by Connie T.

The Washington Post published an explosive article this week revealing that the George W. Bush administration issued memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 explicitly permitting use of harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding against detainees and suspected al-Qaeda members.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded to the existence of these secret memos with,

If White House documents exist that set the policy for use of coercive techniques such as waterboarding, these documents have been kept from the committee. That is unacceptable, and represents the latest example of the Bush administration withholding critical information from Congress and the American people in an attempt to limit our oversight of sensitive intelligence collection activities.

As Chairman, I will not allow the Bush administration's stonewalling to prevent a full accounting of the facts.

There has been no comment from the White House on the matter.

Waterboarding is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities including legal experts, politicians, war veterans, intelligence officials, military judges, and human rights organizations.

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