Keith Olbermann made a comment on the night of the 5th of November
Apparently a DoJ lawyer conducted an experiment...
Apparently an acting assistant attorney general, Daniel Levin, decided to see what "waterboarding" was like as an interrogation technique.
He concluded it was indeed torture, wrote a memo to that effect, and was fired.
Keith is rather heated about the issue, and rightly so.
Unfortunately I fell asleep, but the intertubes have it
Crooks and Liars video archive and transcript
Nothing really to add to that.
Sometime we link because it is a good thing
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On NPR this morning, someone mentioned that at one time the US treated waterboarding (or its equivalent) as a war crime, and prosecuted it accordingly.
Anybody have a reference for that?
The US specifically?
Number of Japanese were prosecuted and convicted for waterboarding POWs in WWII,
and I believe a US officer was prosecuted and convicted under the UCMJ in the Vietnam war (http://hrw.org/pub/2006/washingtonpost012168.pdf)
Some references: http://humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2006/10/26/usdom14465.htm
US Major Edwin Glenn was prosecuted under UCMJ in 1901 for waterboarding prisoners in the Phillippines
The "tormenta de toca" - classy.