Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, was taken to task over a question of torture by a 4th grade student this past week. According the to an article written in the Washington Post, Rice had just finished talking to students at Stanford University and had told them that waterboarding was a legal act.
She elaborated by saying that waterboarding was legal by definition if it was authorized by the acting president. Afterwards she attended the Jewish Primary Day School in Washington and she was in the midst of a dozen students telling about her admiration for Israel, her travels abroad and the importance of learning languages in her discussion with the children. All of the questions had been previously developed by the students but had not been screened by Ms. Rice herself.
After a series of questions about her childhood and her education, a young man named Misha Lerner, from Bethesda, asked the telling question about Bush’s tactics in forcing information from terrorists and detainees? Rice took his question seriously and said that she was reluctant to criticize any president, particularly Obama, but that events were horrible for President Bush after the September 11th acts of terrorism.
Ms. Rice contended that President Bush was very clear in that he wanted everything done to protect his country but that we would do nothing that was against the law. So Bush was only willing to authorize policies that were within the limits of the law, and waterboarding was one of the tactics. It is an act of torture according to President Obama and he outlawed it in January of 2009.
Waterboarding is defined as the act of putting the detainee on his back with his head tilted on a backwards incline. With his mouth open buckets of water are poured all over his face into his mouth and it is similar to the effect of drowning, called dry drowning.
There is no way that this can be called legal or lawful or even a good tactic.