In the first verdict of its kind since former President George W. Bush left office, he and several members of his administration have been successfully convicted in absentia of war crimes in Malaysia.

A new report by the watchdog group Physicians for Human Rights alleges Monday that the Bush Administration experimented on terrorism suspects during their enhanced interrogation program put in force starting in 2002.

George W. Bush did a lot of terrible, criminal things during his presidency, but arguably the single most immoral thing he did was sanction and normalize the use of torture. Guess what? That's not how he sees it.

"Victims of torture at the hands of foreign government officials won a victory in the Supreme Court Tuesday, when the justices ruled federal law does not automatically shield ex-officials from being sued for ordering killings and the abuse of prisoners."

Lawyers that are representing the Gitmo detainees are having their names dragged through the mud by the right.

Cheney made a number of assertions to validate his decision to force "enhanced interrogations" into our Human Intelligence efforts during the War on Terror that are simply wrong. Stating that waterboarding was necessary when terrorists refused to cooperate is absolutely wrong. The individuals waterboarded were already cooperative and providing valuable intelligence prior to the decision to waterboard, and became resistant only after the use of harsh interrogation methods.

I do not believe that the United States should have a policy of using waterboarding to extract information from captured combatants in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Let me explain why.

The Nixon Administration bugged Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Their operatives were caught breaking and entering Watergate to replace a defective device. One of the operatives was a former CIA agent, James McCord, and at least one other had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

This is the full statement Nance prepared for his testimony at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on Thursday, Nov. 8.

The Washington debate over the simulated-drowning technique may be new, but the practice is not. It predates the Inquisition and has been used, off and on, around the world ever since.

Vice President Cheney is on a passionate, mostly secret and sometimes lonely campaign to prevent Congress from approving prohibitions against torture -- prohibitions that he insists could encumber American intelligence gathering. Arguments against torture -- along both moral and pragmatic lines, from both Democrats and Republicans, and even from inside the White House -- have not dissuaded the vice president.