Top US legal adviser refuses to rule out 'torture' technique

The Bush administration really have got themselves into a tangle over the use of waterboarding. Every country in the world and every US administration before this one have agreed that waterboarding constitutes torture, but from Mukasey on down no US official will say that they consider this technique to be torture, obviously because they have been engaging in it.

Now, during a Guardian debate on international law, John Bellinger - an advisor to Condaleeza Rice, has refused to call waterboarding torture even if it were to be used by foreign intelligence services on US citizens.

Now I know he has to say this to avoid the charge of hypocrisy, but isn't this indicative of the knots that this administration have tied themselves in that they now have to say - if a foreign power were to waterboard US citizens - that the US can't say if they would call that torture?

Mr Bellinger made his remarks during a Guardian debate with Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London. Mr Sands asked whether he could imagine any circumstances in which waterboarding could be justified on an American national by a foreign intelligence service. "One would have to apply the facts to the law to determine whether any technique, whatever happened, would cause severe physical pain or suffering," Mr Bellinger said.

When Mr Sands said he found Mr Bellinger's inability to exclude waterboarding on Americans very curious, the US official replied: "Well, I'm not willing to include it or exclude it. Our justice department has concluded that we just don't want to get involved in abstract discussions."

The subject of torture has cost the US under this administration any moral authority she once possessed. We have become used to people like Giuliani falling over themselves to please the Republican base by promising to be as harsh as possible on suspects, but to now find US officials unwilling to say that the waterboarding of one of their own citizens would constitute torture really shows the moral minefield they have lost themselves in.

I wonder how many US citizens would agree that, if Iranians were to waterboard them, that it would be open to interpretation whether or not they had been tortured?

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Tags: John Bellinger, Condaleeza Rice, waterboarding, torture