By John Amato

From Crooks and Liars | Original Article

Karl Rove goes on the BBC and defends waterboarding and tries to justify its use by saying that it's not a black and white issue and reasonable people can disagree. Huh? In his twisted mind the Iraq war was pretty awesome too even though there were no WMD's found.

Leave it to the BBC to not pussyfoot around with an interview.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as "Bush's brain", said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture.

In 2009, President Barack Obama banned waterboarding as a form of torture.

But the practice was sanctioned in written memos by Bush administration lawyers in August 2002, providing legal cover for its use.

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"I'm proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots such as flying aeroplanes into Heathrow and into London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, flying an aeroplane into the tallest building in Los Angeles and other plots," Mr Rove told the BBC.

"Yes, I'm proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with US law."

Hey, Turdblossom----waterboarding is torture. It's always been considered torture and there is no reasonable middle ground position to argue that point. The Geneva Conventions addressed that and the interviewer reminded him of those pesky treaties. The Bush administration even said it was so in their own memos.

A Bush administration memo from 2005, intended to establish a legal basis for aggressive interrogation techniques, contains a footnote that actually describes waterboarding as falling within the administration's definition of torture.

The footnote, found within one of the Office of Legal Council memos released by the Obama administration on Thursday, suggests that officials in the previous White House likely knew that they were torturing terrorism suspects at a time when they claimed to not be involved in such a practice. Bush officials also acknowledged in a different footnote that for a period of time, waterboarding was "used with far greater frequency" and "intensity" than advised, so much so that medical personnel could not confirm the safety of the detainees.