Reading the New York Times website this afternoon, I ran across an article describing President Bush's latest veto, this time on the subject of interrogation techniques. If this bill had been past, it would have made methods such as waterboarding illegal. For those in the dark: during waterboarding, the victim is strapped to a board, head inclined down with either a cloth or cellophane across their face. Water is then repetitively poured across the victims face, sparking the gag reflex. Some try to claim that waterboarding is not actually torture, but I definitely say it is, and that it is criminal.

I am left to wonder then why Bush would not make waterboarding illegal, for it is definitely cruel/unusual punishment. The reported reason for the move was "'Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop terrorists,'". Somehow, this just doesn't work for me. For one thing, something tells me that if someone is being practically drowned, they would just tell you what they know you want to hear, regardless of whether or not it's true. Another thing: the United States government condemns terror, and yet we do these terrible, inhumane things ourselves.

It just doesn't seem right to me that we use such harsh methods on our detainees. Surely there's something else we can do, but at this point, I don't really know what else there is. Our own government has turned to terror to get what it wants, which is an appalling thing; now even we seem to be acting as terrorists now.