GOP Senator Says Waterboarding Torture Technique Is Like "Swimming"

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 9:53 AM on December 12, 2007.

Yesterday on PBS's Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like "swimming":

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that's beside the point. It's not being used.

Conservatives have repeatedly tried to dismiss the seriousness of waterboarding, referring to it as a "swim lesson."

There's no doubt that waterboarding is torture. There's also no question that it's been carried out on detainees. Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou came out this week and confirmed that in 2002, al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded on orders from the White House.

Tagged as: republicans, torture, waterboarding, kiriakou, bong

Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.