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Cheney: "I Was A Big Supporter Of Waterboarding"

by nanute | February 15, 2010 at 01:57 pm

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Writing in the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan makes the case that Dick Cheney is guilty of committing a war crime. In an interview yesterday on ABC the former Vice President is quoted as saying "I was a big supporter of water-boarding." Sullivan asks when, not if, the former Vice President will be prosecuted for war crimes. The attorney general of the United States is legally obligated to prosecute anyone that openly admits to committing a war crime under the United Nations Convention on Torture. Failure to prosecute, could subject the attorney general to prosecution under the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention on Torture.

The question at the end of the day, will be did the Vice President authorize, or knowingly aid and abet a policy of torture while serving as Vice President?

That seems to me to be the big news out of Jonathan Karl's interview with the former vice-president today. There is not a court in the United States or in the world that does not consider waterboarding torture. The Red Cross certainly does, and it's the governing body in international law. It is certainly torture according to the UN Convention on Torture and the Geneva Conventions. The British government, America's closest Western ally, certainly believes it is torture. No legal authority of any type in the US or the world has ever doubted that waterboarding is torture. To have subjected an individual to waterboarding once is torture under US and international law. To subject someone to it 183 times is so categorically torture is it almost absurd to even write this sentence.

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Hugh Askew

at 15:28 on February 15th, 2010

I know Obama isn't a big fan of the practice, but do we know if he casually follows it. Like maybe checks in on Saturdays to see what the standings are?