In the Middle Ages, waterboarding was called “the water cure.”

Upcoming Transfer of Terror Suspects from ‘Black Sites’ May Uncover U.S. Torture Program

On September 6, the president announced that he is moving 14 terror suspects from secret “black site” prisons to Guantanamo where they will “face justice.”

When the prisoners arrive at the U.S. prison in Cuba, they will be interviewed by the Red Cross for the first time. Based on the president’s agitation and urgency regarding this issue, it seems likely these terror suspects will claim that they have been tortured by U.S. interrogators.

This could explain the torture laws sudden priority to the president. It is also interesting that Mr. Bush wants the new definitions of torture to apply retroactively, so that alleged past abuses by U. S. interrogators cannot be prosecuted, as Jonathan Turley suggested last week on Countdown:

You know, the thing that is ticking here, in terms of a clock, is the fact that these 14 guys that were recently transferred just arrived not that long ago in Gitmo in Cuba. They are going to be, or have been, interviewed by the Red Cross. Most people believe that waterboarding, they where (ph) you are held underwater until you think that you‘re going to drown. That is undeniably torture under the international standard.

If that occurs in the coming days, the United States, and specifically the president, will be accused of committing a very serious violation of international law. Torture is one of the top three or four things that the international law is designed to prevent.

And so the reason there‘s this move to try to get legislation as fast as possible is because I think the administration senses that there‘s a lot of trouble coming down this mountain.

Opposition from within his own party last week seems to have caught President Bush off guard. He nearly came unhinged on the topic when it came up in news conference on Friday.

Another report indicates there could be as many as 14,000 prisoners held by U.S. forces in various prisons in the Middle East and elsewhere. If true, the odds are close to 100 percent that prisoners will claim to have been tortured.

All of this makes the case that waterboarding took place, at the very least, and that permission came from high up in the ranks — maybe as high as the Oval Office.