Senate Democrats demanded a criminal investigation into waterboarding by government interrogators after the Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that the tactic was used on three terror suspects.
In congressional testimony on Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden became the first administration official to publicly acknowledge the agency used waterboarding on detainees following the Sept. 11 attacks.
In waterboarding, a person is strapped down and water poured over the cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world.
"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed."
Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. Hayden banned the technique in 2006, but National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told senators during the same hearing on Tuesday that waterboarding remains in the CIA arsenal -- so long as it as the specific consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.
That prompted Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, to call on the Department of Justice to open a criminal inquiry into whether past use of waterboarding violated any law.
The Pentagon bans its employees from using waterboarding to extract information from detainees, and FBI Director Robert Mueller said his investigators do not use coercive tactics in interviewing terror suspects.
Durbin, frustrated with Attorney General Michael Mukasey's refusal last week to define waterboarding a form of torture as critics have, said he would block the nomination of Judge Mark Filip to be the Justice Department's No. 2 official if the criminal inquiry was not opened.
Human Rights Watch, which has been calling on the US to outlaw waterboarding as a form of illegal torture, called Hayden's testimony "an explicit admission of criminal activity." Critics say waterboarding has been outlawed under the UN Convention Against Torture.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2