I know, actually, it isn't that shocking at all. Obviously he feels safe, or he wouldn't have put it right in his book. From today's Washington Post:
Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.
In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.
That's a pretty bold move, but not necessarily unexpected. President Obama seems to be sticking to his preference of looking forwards rather than backwards, and I suspect that, given the fact that the Republicans have taken over the House, the possibility of legal action against the torturers is diminished more than ever.
But I still find it quite remarkable, and telling, that President Bush feels no compunction about confessing to the fact that he authorized torture. The Washington Post goes on about what Bush wrote in his memoir:
In his book, titled "Decision Points," Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was "Damn right" and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book.
Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation techniques - a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods - after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal. "I was a big supporter of waterboarding," Vice President Richard B. Cheney acknowledged in a television interview in February.
As is often the case, the Post falls a little short with its description later in the article of waterboarding as "pouring water onto someone's face while strapped to a board, to convince them they will shortly drown." I think it is important, in light of the fact that President Bush has made this admission, to remind everyone of exactly how horrific waterboarding is. Christopher Hitchens, who is not my favorite political writer and probably doesn't have a lot of fans here, nevertheless did put his money where is mouth is back in 2008, and he decided that as a defender of the technique he should undergo a limited form of waterboarding in order to examine the question of whether or not it is actually torture. In an article about his experience with it entitled Believe Me, It's Torture, he wrote:
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it "simulates" the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The "board" is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
Waterboarding was and remains a crime against humanity. The fact that President Bush would openly admit to authorizing it is essentially a taunt to the rest of us who care about human rights. But what are we going to do about it?