Feinstein And Whitehouse Pressure Bush To Ban Waterboarding

Two Democratic Senators pressed President Bush on Friday to sign a bill that would prohibit 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. 

“[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.”

Democrats 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.

Feinstein and Whitehouse and many other Democrats have argued that the practice is brutal and unnecessary.

“Our intelligence agencies would be able to effectively interrogate detainees – by using 19 techniques that are today used with success by the military,” they wrote. 

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has expressed opposition to the bill, but said that if it is signed into law, he will instruct his employees to follow it.