Army to give up water boarding torture (so they say)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002981306_torture09.html

U.S. to prohibit "water-boarding"

The U.S. Army will prohibit "water-boarding" — the controversial practice of submerging a prisoner's head in water in an effort to make him talk — when it issues its new interrogation manual, the State Department's legal adviser told the U.N. Committee Against Torture on Monday.

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But the Army's decision to outlaw the technique raised concerns about how widely it has been used and why the Army felt it needed to mention it in the manual. Previous versions of the manual hadn't listed it, either as an approved technique or a banned one.

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But reports that CIA interrogators were using the technique have persisted.

The water-boarding ban would extend to the CIA and other U.S. agencies that may be holding terrorism suspects. Last fall, over the objections of the White House, Congress passed legislation that requires all U.S. agencies to use only interrogation techniques that are in the Army's field manual.

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The U.S., recognizing the significance of the hearing, sent an unusually large delegation of 29 senior officials to the meeting.
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goodness, did the shadow government freak?

america, the country that tortures, but not water-boarding, supposedly.