From WaPo:
Key senators say Congress has outlawed one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques — “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner feels near drowning. But the White House will not go that far, saying it would be wrong to tell terrorists which practices they might face.
Inside the CIA, waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information — though “not all of it reliable,” a former senior intelligence official said.
Waterboarding is variously characterized as a powerful tool and a symbol of excess in the nation’s fight against terrorists. But just what is waterboarding, and where does it fit in the arsenal of coercive interrogation techniques? mo’
Robert Kuttner recently wrote in the American Prospect, when it comes to oversight, “[t]he default of Republicans in Congress is staggering. No ongoing investigations on waste and incompetence at the Department of Homeland Security. Nothing on the vast self-serving mess that is the Medicare prescription-drug program. Nothing serious on the scandals by defense contractors in Iraq, or on Cheney’s possible role in securing a $7 billion dollar no-bid contract for Halliburton, or on his secret energy task force. Nothing on the enforcement default by the Environmental Protection Administration and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. No serious oversight of the FBI. Precious little on the ongoing failure to rebuild New Orleans, or on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, or the illegal domestic spying, or on the Justice Department’s failure to enforce the right to vote. Nothing on the data-mining program that has revived the supposedly discarded John Poindexter plan by the back door.”
And certainly no follow-up on signing statements. We live in a country where we have the ablity to control where our government is going. Why don’t we? Is this what you really want? http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061004-10.html
…the only president to Never veto a bill which gives congress no option to override his decisions.