It was a good day to bury bad news. As millions of Americans were glued to the most exciting presidential race in living memory, the Bush Administration admitted publicly for the first time that it had used the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding on terror suspects in its custody.
Past practitioners of waterboarding, which is condemned around the globe as torture, have included the Spanish Inquisitors and the Khmer Rouge. Official confirmation that American interrogators had joined their ranks was almost lost in a blizzard of rolling headlines as the contenders battled through Super Tuesday’s historic “national primary” for their party’s presidential nomination.
Michael Hayden, the CIA director, confirmed the use of waterboarding in congressional testimony, in response to leaked reports that the tactic was used on three al-Qaeda suspects in the two years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The admission prompted demands from Democratic senators for an investigation into whether interrogators broke the law.
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