George W. Bush Defends Waterboarding: Would Waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed Again

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Former President George W. Bush says if he had it to do over, he would still waterboard the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Waterboarding is a simulated drowning technique that the Obama administration considers torture. Bush acknowledged Wednesday that the U.S. used the harsh interrogation technique on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and said he would "do it again to save lives."

Bush made the comment while speaking to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Mich.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and is the most senior al-Qaida operative in U.S. custody.

In his speech, Bush defended the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. He said ousting Saddam Hussein "was the right thing to do and the world is a better place without him."

Comments

[calliccokat]

02:09 AM on 06/05/2010

People forget the idea of a truth commission whereby Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Yoo and others would be required to testify and tell the truth. Bush is entitled to his opinion, nobody how wrongheaded they are, but the facts are the facts.

And everyone involved in the waterboarding of KLM and other prisoners should have to give their accounts fully, factually, and under oath.

Sen. Patrick Leanhy's idea was a good one, but it was never embraced by the MSM or the Washington establishment. Bush did the right thing by stating his opinion.. now let history take its course. And have the whole bumch of them talk about everything: NSA wiretapping, prewar intelligence, and especially.. torture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/politics/20justice.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/09/what-did-bush-tell-gonzales/7064/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-waas/pressure-increases-on-tor_b_197764.html

[Guelo51]

04:58 PM on 06/04/2010

It's beyond mind boggling that an individual like this can get away with Murder, and boast about it in the media. This man, along with his equally sickening partner in crime - Cheney - should be in jail and is not worthy of being called an American! He, and others, are responsible for the direct murder of thousands of Americans and civilian Iraqis. I'm very disappointed at the OBAMA administration for not treating these individuals for what they truly are: WAR CRIMINALS!

[tompoe]

09:23 AM on 06/07/2010

Corporate media glorifies war criminals. The economic club members of Grand Rapids also love war criminals. Bush and the other war criminals weren't satisfied with murder. They needed more, as Bush explained to the audience of the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, all of which paid handsomely to be able to attend and learn more about torture as an acceptable form of behavior for all Americans.

[Rooster Coburn]

03:45 PM on 06/04/2010

I'm sure KSM was glad to be in the custody of Americans and not Pakistani, Egyptian, Indian or Syrian interrogators. Hey, you guys don't play nice and neither do we.

[Beegood]

04:05 PM on 06/04/2010

What a lovely world you choose to live in. This is why men who are preoccupied with looking tough (and waving their gonads around) are not suited to leadership (i.e. Bush proved this many times over).

Should be bring playground tactics to international relations? Obviously not.

[Hoosierbrad]

02:03 PM on 06/04/2010

Pres, Bush, with all due respect, your Vice President posed more of a danger to the freedom of Americans. Your attitude on torture will only endanger Americans in the future. I hope you realize the significance of your remarks and actions before you die. However, since you are a Republican you will still see nothing wrong. I therefore desire you to go to h el l when you die and suffer waterboarding every day for eternity.

[nothingchanges]

11:32 AM on 06/04/2010

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." .............................................................Adolf Hitler

[Nelson Montana]

01:15 PM on 06/04/2010

"Eating meat is wrong." ...Adolf Hitler.

What's your point?

[nothingchanges]

03:53 PM on 06/04/2010

My point is that bad policy is often couched in patriotic phrases. I would like to offer another direct quote but I can't recall or find it. Something along the lines of when you resort to the tactics of your enemy, you yourself become the enemy.

Torture is condemned by society for a reason. Water boarding has been officially regarded as torture since the 1800's. In 1947 the U.S. charged Yukio Asano (A Japanese officer) for "War Crimes" for water boarding an American civilian. Mr. Asano received 15 years of hard labor for that "crime". A crime the Bush administration made into legal act for their own purposes. This act of hypocrisy will probably be what Bush/Cheney will be most remembered for in the history books. Not a legacy I would choose, but an apt one.

I can find no reference to a quote by Hitler "Eating meat is wrong" Please site your source.............. BTW Hitler reportedly ate Bavarian sausages, liver, and was fond of stuffed squab (roast pigeon), yet claimed to be a vegetarian... hypocrisy, isn't it?

[Nelson Montana]

11:32 AM on 06/04/2010

Bleeding heart/empty headed liberalism lives!

People want to think they're so compassionate, so tolerant, so open minded, so ABOVE everyone else. The lefts hero should be Neville Chamberlain.

I may be a progressive liberal, but I'm not insane.

Hey, I can't stand Bush, but that doesn't make KSM a sweetheart. People do not see this issue beyond the abstract notion of their ideology. The same goes for wiretapping. I know people who say they'd rather see the Brooklyn Bridge blown up than to violate someone's rights to a private phone conversation. This isn't much different.

Personally, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they waterboarded him, beat him, chocked him, and kicked him in the balls around the clock AFTER he confessed. Yeah, that's just revenge. But at least it's an honest emotion.

[Lemmy]

12:45 PM on 06/04/2010

Well put.

"Fortunately, aggressive interrogation techniques like those outlined in the memos to the CIA are effective. As the memos explain, high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Zubaydah, one of Osama bin Laden's key lieutenants, provided no actionable intelligence when facing traditional U.S. methods. It is doubtful that any high-level al Qaeda operative would ever provide useful intelligence in response to traditional methods.

Yet KSM and Zubaydah provided critical information after being waterboarded -- information that, among other things, helped to prevent a "Second Wave" attack in Los Angeles, according to the memos. Similarly, the 2005 report by Vice Adm. Albert Church on Defense Department interrogation policies, the "Church Report" -- of which I served as the executive editor -- documented the success of aggressive techniques against high-value detainees like Mohamed al Kahtani, 9/11's "20th hijacker."

The aggressive techniques in the CIA memos are also undeniably safe, having been adopted from Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training used with our own troops.

I have personally been waterboarded, put into stress positions, sleep deprived, slapped in the face. While none of this was enjoyable, I am none the worse for wear."

William McSwain, a former scout/sniper platoon commander in the Marines and assistant U.S. attorney, was executive editor of the 2005 Review of Department of Defense Detention Operations and Detainee Interrogation Techniques (The Church Report). He is an attorney in private practice in Philadelphia.

[kpresidente]

01:24 PM on 06/04/2010

"People want to think they're so compassionate, so tolerant, so open minded, so ABOVE everyone else. The lefts hero should be Neville Chamberlain. "

Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is - he finds that it rather destroys than saves! - Neitzsche

[SuperBenFranklin]

11:20 AM on 06/04/2010

This should read:

Bush acknowledged Wednesday that the U.S. broke the law and said he would "do it again."

[Nelson Montana]

12:41 PM on 06/04/2010

If someone was going to kill a member of your family, would you not stop them in fear of breaking the law?

[Beegood]

01:38 PM on 06/04/2010

And torture stopped somebody from being killed? I don't think that has been proven. I think that you can say that it has been a recruitment tool for those who wish us harm and has increased the risk for our soldiers. Often a knee jerk reaction is not the wisest.

[Naithom]

01:54 PM on 06/04/2010

Been watching 24 again?

It would behoove you to read some on the German POW's in WWII, who because they had been told stories of how fairly and humanely they had been treated by the Americans during WWI were willing to surrender instead of continuing to fight in situations where they were hungry and tired. Lives were saved because we took the high road and did things legally and humanely.

If waterboarding was so effective, why is it that it had to be done repeatedly over a matter of weeks?

All that torture has done was create more terrorists because we have proved to these people that we are what the enemy claimed we were. The minute we used torture we lost the high ground and became just as dirty as they were, all because some sociopaths with a Jack Bauer fixation felt the need to prove how "manly" they were.

You may not like the legal means of doing things because it isn't showy like on TV or the movies, but, you'll note that it's worked more often than not for several hundred years.

[DWMH1313]

11:10 AM on 06/04/2010

If he's such a criminal, why didn't the Dems attempt to prosecute him when they took over in 2006? Granted, this fool was nothing to be proud of, but the way things are going now, Obama is going to make him look like Abe Lincoln when it's all said and done.

[LowGenius]

12:53 PM on 06/04/2010

They don't prosecute because if they do it sets up international prosecution, and the US government doesn't want to set a legal precedent subjecting our leaders to prosecution under international law. It's actually a pretty clever and intelligent, for once, approach...if you ignore the fact that it allows people like Bush to get away with murder.

[firekat]

11:28 AM on 06/06/2010

No doubt about it, Bush was such a criminal - and not the first politician to go unpunished. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the Dems lack the ideological purity necessary to take unilateral revenge on enemies who wrap themselves in the flag to the extent Bush did. Hermann Goering would be proud.

[tacevad]

10:50 AM on 06/04/2010

an even scarier scenario are the americans who would vote for this war criminal yet again.

[Lemmy]

12:40 PM on 06/04/2010

When was he convicted of being a war criminal?

[tacevad]

04:45 PM on 06/04/2010

self confession of war crimes is done, conviction will follow even if it must be posthumously

[stewie1324]

10:33 AM on 06/04/2010

Not sure why everyone feels sorry for KSM. Im not a Bush fan either but I dont consider water-boarding KSM to be one of his many mistakes. This is the guy who admitted to planning the 9/11 attacks and also decapitating Daniel Pearl on that video.

[tolerating cattle]

11:09 AM on 06/04/2010

Eye for an eye, eh?

[SuperBenFranklin]

11:19 AM on 06/04/2010

We don't feel sorry for him. We just know that laws are laws and you don't change them.

There is a reason why we don't torture. And you don't change that just because someone really deserves it.

Bush didn't understand that in order to defend our liberty, you don't torture people. Not the other way around.

And the reason we don't torture people, is that there are people like Bush who would think nothing of doing it, to anyone, you, me... anyone who he deems is against him, no matter what the law says.

Our laws protect us from those who would choose not to follow them.

[germangirl]

12:05 PM on 06/04/2010

fanned...

[MissingAmerica]

10:29 AM on 06/04/2010

Bush's ignorance and intolerance know no bounds. As I read this again, I continue to be amazed that he and Cheney have not been held accountable for plunging us into a war which seems to have no end, a war which lost us the respect of the global community and bankrupt our nation. What they did is tantamount to murder, a crime for which the Statute of Limitations is clear; there is no timeline and they can be charged at any time for the rest of their lives. The time to prosecute should be NOW! Perhaps the hatred against this country will ease a bit if we can demonstrate by our actions that what Bush and Cheney did is not okay. Take these men out of their fancy suits and cowboy hats and they are simply human beings who went horribly wrong. Perhaps upholding the laws on war crimes will show the world we are still a great nation.

[talyn530]

10:14 AM on 06/04/2010

Wow!!!

[DougDeWitt]

10:10 AM on 06/04/2010

Uh... No. International law considers waterboarding torture, not just the Obama administration. Japanese soldiers were executed for this by an international tribunal following WWII.

[talyn530]

09:55 AM on 06/04/2010

As a former U. S. serviceman, it amazes me that the former president, just doesn't get it. Perhaps, had he really, truly served, he'd be able to wrap his head around the concepts that the article is espousing...or not!

[truth67]

09:38 AM on 06/04/2010

self dewmonstrate please