Sen. Kit Bond: Waterboarding Is Like ‘Swimming’

Original Link: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/12/bond-waterboarding-swimming/

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like “swimming“:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/bondwaterboarding.320.240.flv]
Conservatives have repeatedly tried to dismiss the seriousness of waterboarding, referring to it as a “swim lesson.”

There’s no doubt that waterboarding is torture. There’s also no question that it’s been carried out on detainees. Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou came out this week and confirmed that in 2002, al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded on orders from the White House.