Hoekstra: Some waterboarding was legal

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, candidate for governor of Michigan in 2010, told Fox News that there is a “wide range of waterboarding” and that the waterboarding used on high-level detainees by the Bush administration was “consistent with U.S. law.” He refused to say whether waterboarding was torture. Here’s the video:

He says: “There is a wide range of waterboarding. I’m telling you, that I know waterboarding was used, Shep. I’m not mincing words. I’m saying that I believe the techniques used in 2002, in 2003, which included waterboarding in a specific format that I’m aware of how they used it, that I believe that was consistent with U.S. law.”

Notwithstanding the fact that this nation has always prosecuted people for waterboarding, even our own soldiers, the facts revealed by the memos that have been released so far shows that the waterboarding used against high-level detainees in 2002 and 2003 did not even comply with the restrictions placed on them by the OLC memos that allowed it to happen. The OLC memo released as part of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture a few weeks ago specifies the use of waterboarding must be brief and temporary:

…where authorized, it may be used for two “sessions” per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water appliaction. See id. at 42. Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period.

But we also know from that same report that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August, 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March, 2003. Those numbers simply don’t add up. The waterboarding that was done didn’t even meet the standards of the OLC memos, which were so badly argued and so universally condemned that even the Bush administration ended up rescinding them later.