Democrats Pressure Bush To Ban Waterboarding

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and two Democratic senators pressed President Bush on Friday to sign a bill that would ban the use of the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding, hoping to turn up the heat on the issue.

Earlier this month, Congress approved an intelligence authorization bill, which included a provision prohibiting the CIA from using interrogation methods not included in the U.S. Army Field Manual.

The legislation would prohibit waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques.

President Bush has vowed to veto the bill, arguing that Congress should not dictate how the intelligence community does its job. 

Democrats, however, have long opposed the use of waterboarding and nearly derailed the nomination of Attorney General Michael Mukasey after he refused to unequivocally state that that practice was a form of torture.

“[Signing this bill] is the right thing to do,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote in an op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune on Friday.

“Waterboarding and the other coercive techniques are torture, and their use does not befit our great nation.”
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