New vistas in humanitarian law from Alberto Gonzales: Waterboarding, the process in which a detainee is forced to believe he is drowning, may not be "beyond the bounds of human decency."
Senators Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy pointed out that the executive order President Bush issued on Friday on CIA interrogations interpreting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions specifies certain activities for outright banning due to their contravention of "human decency": sexual humiliation or the threat thereof, or religious denigration, for instance. Why, then, the senators asked, doesn't the order specify prohibitions on suspected interrogation techniques that military judge-advocates general have testified are also contraventions of the convention -- namely, threatening detainees with dogs, prolonged stress positions, forced nudity, mock executions and waterboarding?
Gonzales, going way further than intelligence chief Mike McConnell has, said that some of those measures are "possible techniques used by the CIA," even after the executive order. It wasn't confirmation, by any stretch, that waterboarding will still occur. But in response to the specific question, Gonzales told Kennedy that "some acts are clearly beyond the pale, and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. ... There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator, and again, it is for those reasons that I can't discuss them in a public session." The order, naturally, received DoJ review before it was finalized.
There you have it, from the nation's "top cop": waterboarding and mock executions don't "clearly" shock the conscience.