Bush's 'Decision Points' Is A Terrifying Journey Into the Authoritarian Mind

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.

Ali Soufan Testimony Before Senate Judicial Committe

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.

It seems fairly easy -- even for those overtly hostile to the basic rules of logic and law -- to see what conclusions are compelled by these clear premises:

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.