Dick Cheney admits being a supporter of the near-drowning torture technique called waterboarding, even if the US generally regards its use as a war crime. Robert Parry, author of a new book entitled Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, writes in AlterNet, “Cheney was unrepentant about his support for the technique. He answered with an emphatic “yes” when asked if he had opposed the Bush administration’s decision to suspend the use of waterboarding – after it was employed against three “high-value detainees” sometimes in repetitive sequences. He added that waterboarding should still be “on the table” today.”

Top legal opinion in the US is divided as to whether waterboarding should be classified as torture. Some say ‘that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee led to injuries that might result in “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions” then the interrogation technique could not be defined as torture. Since waterboarding is not intended to cause death or organ failure – only the panicked gag reflex associated with drowning – it was deemed not to be torture.’

The rise in legal debate over the definition of waterboarding as torture stems from the official permission for the drowning technique to be used in interrogation. This is Cheney’s juicier revelation in defense of impunity: ‘that the brutal interrogations were approved by independent Justice Department legal experts who thus gave the administration a legitimate reason to believe the actions were within the law.’

It seems that the rule of law in the United States depends on the legal protection that its justice system can actually accord the country’s political elite. The powerful do know the meaning of impunity more than they do basic human rights.

Photo Courtesy of Karen Ballard, White House

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