Waterboarding has received yet one more seal of approval from previous President George W. Bush in his new memoir "Decision Points," reports NPR. The controversial interrogation technique had been used by United States authorities to obtain info from radical Islamist prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Matt Lauer sat down with George Bush for an interview, and also the previous president restated what the nation has already heard: that waterboarding had been allowed because administration lawyers said waterboarding is legal. Source for this article – President Bush defends waterboarding in memoir by Personal Money Store.
Using waterboarding to prevent things
After 9-11, Waterboarding became something talked about a lot. U.S. intelligence was sure one more attack would occur. A terrorist attack was being prepared for. President Bush received info from the intelligence. This showed that a future attack was likely. Waterboarding ended up getting the permission from President Bush that it needed. He had to talk to his attorneys about this first though.
‘Why is waterboarding legal?’
Lauer asked Bush why he thought waterboarding had been legal beginning the big waterboarding question. The previous president responded as follows:
"Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I’m not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of individuals around you. And I do."
But the natural extension of that line of inquiry, writes NPR – the climactic question that The United States still wants answered – went unasked by Lauer. Was waterboarding really a "moral" choice even if it was legal? Waterboarding is something that many countries say is torture. Several wonder if President Bush has a problem with it now considering his "born-again" Christian religion he states to have.
Several ‘Decision points’
Dealing with terrorism and national security requires swift, decisive decisions. Being a world leader requires these decisions to be made even if many individuals will never understand the decisions. Many understand it is legal to waterboard. The morality behind it’s the real concern. This can be compared to slavery. It may not have been moral but it had been surely legal in America. Numerous wonder if it’s moral to have abortion legal also.
Many wonder the exact same things about waterboarding. Unfortunately, the CIA's destruction of Abu Ghraib interrogation readings has met the statute of limitations. There will never be a court case. This is because a prosecution for obstruction of Justice cannot ever happen. Prosecutions over waterboarding may never occur, despite the fact that Obama has banned the practice and stated that it can no longer be ordered by a president.
Citations
NPR
npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/11/09/131184413/president-bush-would-jesus-ok-waterboarding
NPR
npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/11/09/131184522/no-one-charged-in-destruction-of-cia-interrogation-tapes?f=1001&ft=1&sc=tw
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