Cheney’s Legacy: Waterboarding

Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to a college TV audience about the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program. “Some people call it torture,” he said. “It wasn’t torture. We were very careful in all respects to abide by the law.”

“If he doesn’t think that was torture,” Senator Angus King said on Sunday, “I would invite him … to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through.”

— “Sen. Angus King: If Cheney doesn’t think waterboarding is torture, I invite him to try it,” Lindsey Abrams, Salon

More:

“Dick Cheney: Waterboarding gets ‘results,'” Chicago Sun-Times

“Sorry, Dick Cheney: Torture doesn’t work,” Ryan Cooper, The Week

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Alberto Gonzales Goes Nashville

Nashville’s Belmont University has a new law school, one that opened last summer. It also has a new Distinguished Professor of Law, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Distinguished Professor is also distinguished by his official endorsement of government torture and kidnapping during his time at the White House and in the Justice Department.

May 1, 2009 — Law Day

 

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87-20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2009, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon the people of the United States to acknowledge the importance of our Nation’s legal and judicial systems with appropriate ceremonies and activities, and to display the flag of the United States in support of this national observance.

In 1958, President Eisenhower established Law Day as “a day of national dedication to the principles of government under law.” Each year on Law Day, we celebrate our commitment to the rule of law.
— Law Day, U.S.A., 2009, A Proclamation.

 United States Code, Title  18, 2441: War Crimes

(d) Common Article 3 Violations.—

(1) Prohibited conduct.— In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: