We have tortured, and we would do it again

CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that the Administration has used waterboarding on three detainees.

"We used it [waterboarding] against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about Al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

(See full story in Chicago Tribune.)

This is an admission of a crime. Waterboarding is already torture according to the Geneva Conventions, which apply to all detainees in the custody of the U.S. government.

Senator Richard Durbin (D - Illinois) wrote a letter yesterday to Attorney General Mukasey asking him to investigate possible crimes by the administration.

In his letter to Attorney General Mukasey, Durbin wrote, “In light of your testimony that, ‘There are circumstances where waterboarding is clearly unlawful,’ the Justice Department should investigate the instances in which the Administration has used waterboarding to determine whether any laws were violated.”