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Why did every other President before Obama not issue an executive order to ban waterboarding? Because waterboarding, while now expressly illegal, was not illegal before that executive order.
Why did Bush have to make a executive order banning torture, if torture was always illegal? Was torture legal before? His executive order cited 18 USC 2340 and the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but didn't list waterboarding. Critics said that waterboarding falls under 18 USC 2340... so he was trying make a loophole around it
America always had a history of condemning waterboarding..
Waterboarding IS TORTURE - Page 1Water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War. On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial photograph of an American soldier supervising the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as "fairly common." The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was thrown out of the army. Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum at Ho Chi Minh City.
In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor. The charges of Violation of the Laws and Customs of War against Asano also included "beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward."
In its 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. Department of State formally recognized "submersion of the head in water" as torture in its examination of Tunisia's poor human rights record, and critics of waterboarding draw parallels between the two techniques, citing the similar usage of water on the subject.
Bush's legal team was smart and they knew what they were doing.. They're just playing politics with history and trying to say waterboarding is not that cruel or it works, so the ends justify the means. I am sure they knew it was controversial from the beginning.. Lots of people and countries have always considered it torture, so waterboarding being bad wasn't a foreign concept when the Bush Admin engaged in it.
People think they are justified on both sides.. I understand that.. but to act like waterboarding was a non issue before the Bush Admin is not true. It was considered illegal by the military and it was considered torture in previous situations and in many countries.