1: In all of the previous instances, State, Federal, and Military legal experts classified waterboarding as torture and a crime and was prosecuted as such. None of the practioners of the use of waterboarding and none of the authorizing superiors from the previous administration have been held accountable for their actions.

I apologize, I’m doing this on my iPhone and it deleted my previous entry twice.

You are correct, there is a huge difference between the practices which instigated “the court-martial addressing the practice of waterboarding from 1903, a state court case from the Twenties, a series of prosecutions at the [post-World War II] Tokyo Tribunal (in many of which the death penalty was sought) and another court-martial in 1968″.

1: In all of the previous instances, State, Federal, and Military legal experts classified waterboarding as torture and a crime and was prosecuted as such. None of the practioners of the use of waterboarding and none of the authorizing superiors have been held accountable for their actions.

2: The decision to use waterboarding to extract information from prisoners was not authorized by the White House in any of the previous instances. (Note: Just because the president authorizes it doesn’t make it legal – Watergate comes to mind). The former President and Vice-President have both publicly stated that they authorized the use of waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM for those who cannot spell or pronounce long names).

Additional notes:

CIA and military interrogators in question are using the Nuremburg defense, “I was just following orders”. This was not a valid defense in the Nuremburg Trials, the Tokyo Tribunals, or in the 1968 court martial.

Having medical personnel watching over torture does not make it “not torture” it brings it into the realm of “medical torture”. Whether the medical personnel either perform the techniques themselves or guide the interrogators, the result is the same. “Medical Torture” puts us in the same group as WWII Japanese Unit 731, Auschwitz, and Saddam Hussein. I repeat, our previous President and VP have admitted in interviews and in their writings that they authorized this.

The interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed prior to the use of waterboarding provided real “actionable” intelligence. The 187 waterboarding interrogations produced far more “false positives” (as torture has been repeatedly proven useful in extracting false confessions).

What frightens me is that the refusal of the current administration to prosecute members of the previous administration has led a majority of the republican candidates for President to state publicly that they will resume the policy of torturing (waterboarding) detainees believing they have a clear legal precedent.

Waterbording is classified as torture and an international war crime.

Have you noticed that neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney have left the security of the United States since they left office in 2008?