I would strongly recommend you read the following.

Wild exaggeration.

AP: Gitmo Detainees Say They Were Sold

They fed them well. The Pakistani tribesmen slaughtered a sheep in honor of their guests, Arabs and Chinese Muslims famished from fleeing U.S. bombing in the Afghan mountains. But their hosts had ulterior motives: to sell them to the Americans, said the men who are now prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told AP the accounts sounded legitimate because U.S. allies regularly got money to help catch Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Gary Schroen said he took a suitcase of $3 million in cash into Afghanistan himself to help supply and win over warlords to fight for U.S. Special Forces.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we paid rewards," said Schroen, who retired after 32 years in the CIA soon after the fall of Kabul in late 2001. He recently published the book "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."

Schroen said Afghan warlords like Gen. Rashid Dostum were among those who received bundles of notes. "It may be that we were giving rewards to people like Dostum because his guys were capturing a lot of Taliban and al-Qaida," he said.

Pakistan has handed hundreds of suspects to the Americans, but Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP, "No one has taken any money."

The U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and State and the Central Intelligence Agency also said they were unaware of bounty payments being made for random prisoners.

The U.S. Rewards for Justice program pays only for information that leads to the capture of suspected terrorists identified by name, said Steve Pike, a State Department spokesman. Some $57 million has been paid under the program, according to its web site.

It offers rewards up to $25 million for information leading to the capture of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But a wide variety of detainees at the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture. Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in the transcripts from the tribunals, which were held to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as enemy combatants.

One detainee who said he was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan accused the country's intelligence service of trumping up evidence against him to get bounty money from the U.S.

"When I was in jail, they said I needed to pay them money and if I didn't pay them, they'd make up wrong accusations about me and sell me to the Americans and I'd definitely go to Cuba," he told the tribunal. "After that I was held for two months and 20 days in their detention, so they could make wrong accusations about me and my (censored), so they could sell us to you."

Another prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for "a briefcase full of money" then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo.

"It's obvious. They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them — just like someone catches a fish and sells it," he said. The detainee said he was seized by "mafia" operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time — an Arab in a foreign country.

A detainee who said he was a Saudi businessman claimed, "The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans."

This was part of a roundup of all foreigners and Arabs in that area," of Pakistan near the Afghan border, he said, telling the tribunal he went to Pakistan in November 2001 to help Afghan refugees.

The military-appointed representative for one detainee — who said he was a Taliban fighter — said the prisoner told him he and his fellow fighters "were tricked into surrendering to Rashid Dostum's forces. Their agreement was that they would give up their arms and return home. But Dostum's forces sold them for money to the U.S."

Several detainees who appeared to be ethnic Chinese Muslims — known as Uighurs — described being betrayed by Pakistani tribesmen along with about 100 Arabs.

They said they went to Afghanistan for military training to fight for independence from China. When U.S. warplanes started bombing near their camp, they fled into the mountains near Tora Bora and hid for weeks, starving.

One detainee said they finally followed a group of Arabs, apparently fighters, being guided by an Afghan to the Pakistani border.

"We crossed into Pakistan and there were tribal people there, and they took us to their houses and they killed a sheep and cooked the meat and we ate," he said

That night, they were taken to a mosque, where about 100 Arabs also sheltered. After being fed bread and tea, they were told to leave in groups of 10, taken to a truck, and driven to a Pakistani prison. From there, they were handed to Americans and flown to Guantanamo.

"When we went to Pakistan the local people treated us like brothers and gave us good food and meat," said another detainee. But soon, he said, they were in prison in Pakistan where "we heard they sold us to the Pakistani authorities for $5,000 per person."

There have been reports of Arabs being sold to the Americans after the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, but the testimonies offer the most detail from prisoners themselves.

In March 2002, the AP reported that Afghan intelligence offered rewards for the capture of Al Qaeda fighters — the day after a five-hour meeting with U.S. Special Forces. Intelligence officers refused to say if the two events were linked and if the United States was paying the offered reward of 150 million Afghanis, then equivalent to $4,000 a head.

That day, leaflets and loudspeaker announcements promised "the big prize" to those who turned in Al Qaeda fighters.

Said one leaflet: "You can receive millions of dollars. ... This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life — pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

Helicopters broadcast similar announcements over the Afghan mountains, enticing people to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime," said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister and leader of a group of Arab lawyers representing nearly 100 detainees.

Al-Nauimi said a consortium of wealthy Arabs, including Saudis, told him they also bought back fellow citizens who had been captured by Pakistanis.

Khalid al-Odha, who started a group fighting to free 12 Kuwaiti detainees, said his imprisoned son, Fawzi, wrote him a letter from Guantanamo Bay about Kuwaitis being sold to the Americans in Afghanistan.

One Kuwaiti who was released, 26-year-old Nasser al-Mutairi, told al-Odha that interrogators said Dostum's forces sold them to the Pakistanis for $5,000 each, and the Pakistanis in turn sold them to the Americans.

"I also heard that Saudis were sold to the Saudi government by the Pakistanis," al-Odha said. "If I had known that, I would have gone and bought my son back."

Every prisoner at Gitmo was NOT waterboarded.

... the CIA is charged with waterboarding three “terrorists” ...

Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden about Three "High-Value" Detainees Now in Guantanamo
Andy Worthington
Posted February 6, 2008 | 04:38 PM (EST)
Firstly if it's true that only three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, then why did a number of "former and current intelligence officers and supervisors" tell ABC News in November 2005 that "a dozen top al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe" were subjected to six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," instituted in mid-March 2002?

According to the ABC News account, the six techniques used by the CIA on the "dozen top al-Qaeda targets" were "The Attention Grab," "Attention Slap," "The Belly Slap" and three other techniques that are particularly worrying: "Long Time Standing," "The Cold Cell," and, of course, "Waterboarding."

"Long Time Standing" was described as "among the most effective [techniques]," in which prisoners "are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours." The ABC News report added, "Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions." In "The Cold Cell," the prisoner "is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water."

The description of "Waterboarding" was as follows: "The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."

The article proceeded with recollections of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who apparently "won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess" (the interrogators tried it on themselves, but "only lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in").

According to the ABC News report, one other detainee who was waterboarded was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the director of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, who was captured in November 2001. His current whereabouts are unknown, although there are suspicions that he was finally delivered to the Libyan government. Having slipped off the radar, the government clearly does not want his case revived, not only because it may have to explain what has happened to him, but also because, as a result of the application of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," al-Libi claimed that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Libi's "confession" led to President Bush declaring, in October 2002, "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases," and his claims were, notoriously, included in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. The claims were of course, groundless, and were recanted by al-Libi in January 2004, but it took Dan Cloonan, a veteran FBI interrogator, who was resolutely opposed to the use of torture, to explain why they should never have been believed in the first place. Cloonan told Jane Mayer, "It was ridiculous for interrogators to think Libi would have known anything about Iraq... The reason they got bad information is that they beat it out of him. *****You never get good information from someone that way."*****

My second question for Mr. Hayden concerns an allegation made by Murat Kurnaz, the German detainee who was released from Guantanamo in August 2006. In an article in the Washington Spectator last July, focusing on Kurnaz's story, as described in his book Fünf Jahre Meines Lebens: Ein Bericht Aus Guantanamo (Five Years Of My Life: A Report From Guantanamo), the following passage came after Kurnaz's recollections of being hung by his wrists for "hours and days," interrupted only by a doctor who came to "check his vital signs to determine if he could withstand more enhanced interrogation," and his recollections of seeing, in the neighboring cell, another detainee who had died as a result of this ordeal:

Kurnaz said he was also subjected to waterboarding and electric shock. And that beatings were routine and constant. He theorizes that much of the torture was a result of the failure of the American soldiers and agents to capture any real terrorists in the initial sweeps. (He was told that he was sold to the Americans for $3,000 by Pakistani police, who identified him as a terrorist.) 'They didn't have any big fish. And they thought that by torture they could get one of us to say something. "I know Osama" or something like that. Then they could say they had a big fish.'

In light of the comments made by CIA sources in November 2005, and by Murat Kurnaz in his book, I can only wonder how it's feasible for Mr. Hayden to assert that the use of waterboarding was restricted to three of the 14 "high-value" detainees who were transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, and, by extension, to claim that waterboarding was not used elsewhere in the "War on Terror" prisons; specifically, as Murat Kurnaz alleged, in one of the US prisons in Afghanistan, which, with Guantanamo, provided the template for the well-chronicled riot of torture and abuse that later migrated to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

... for information that could have avoided post-9-11 attacks.

It is time for Hussein the Torturer to be tortured!

So if someone promotes or allows torture, they too should be tortured?

Perhaps someone could come up with some websites that proves the US actually "captured" these so-called "enemy combatants" on an actual "battlefield" as is always being shoved down our throats in all the neocon propaganda.

Associated Press, March 20th, 2004
The US House of Representatives has voted unanimously to double the reward for Osama bin Laden's capture to $50 million.

The move came in connection with a broader bill that expanded the State Department's anti-terrorist rewards program to provide cash and other benefits for those helping authorities track down drug traffickers who back terrorist activities.

The bill, which was passed 414-0 (I guess the entire House of Representatives are those hated "neocons") on Thursday, now goes to the Senate. Kathryn Harris, a Florida Republican, said it recognised the growing link between the drug trade and the financing of terrorist activities.

The legislation also amends a 1956 law to raise the maximum amount of terrorist and narco-terrorist rewards from $5 million to $25 million.

The legislation gives the State Department flexibility to give out vehicles, appliances and other goods and to explore ways to best publicise the rewards program.

Mark Kirk, Republican, said the State Department rewards program has been used in the Balkans and in securing the capture of Aimal Khan Kasi, the Pakistani executed two years ago for killing two CIA staff.

The biggest reward paid was to the person who pointed US forces to Saddam Hussein's two sons, who were killed in a US attack. The reward was $15 million for each son, and the tipster received the bulk of the $30 million.

A $25 million reward was also posted for Saddam, but that money is not likely to be given out because he was located by the US military.

... Last July, the State Department raised the bounty for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the accused terrorist mastermind in Iraq, from $10 million to $25 million.

On Monday, the al-Zarqawi group al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb in Baghdad, Iraq, at a checkpoint near the headquarters of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, according to an Internet statement. (Full story)

Officials said the State Department is reviewing whether to double the reward for bin Laden to $50 million, with the final decision to be made by incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

This month, the Rewards for Justice Program also launched an advertising campaign in Pakistan to publicize the existing reward for bin Laden.

Print ads in Urdu and Pashto languages have begun to run in Pakistani newspapers featuring photos and reward amounts for bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.

The print ads will be followed by a broadcast ad blitz in cities and border areas where U.S. officials believe bin Laden is hiding.

"The people there are largely illiterate," said Rep. Mark Kirk, who wrote the legislation that would allow the doubling of the reward. "So we're going to back up this campaign with a radio campaign that is the primary way people find out about the world."

Kirk, an Illinois Republican, returned last week from a visit to Pakistan.

Officials said the scripts for the radio ads are being finalized, and that the ads should be running within 10 days to two weeks. A television ad campaign is also in development, the officials said.

I suspect he won't go on national tv and tell the American people we were wrong, our policies contributed to the attack, and we're to blame, not the terrorists. He'll strike back. He may not do it in full view, but he'll instruct our military and intelligence services to find the culprits, their bases, and their leaders, and take some action. Bet on it.

It is simply not true that the US had not used water boarding in the past .

It is an interrogation method that date back to the 14th century. The interrogation method was used by the Japanese in World War II, by U.S. troops in the Philippines and by the French in Algeria.

As one counterinsurgency study noted:

Officially, the Army condemned the water cure, which fell under [General Order]
100's prohibition of torture. Unofficially, many officers winked at the practice,
and military courts proved exceedingly reluctant to punish officers charged with
applying coercive methods. As the war progressed the number of incidents of
abuse grew as officers...came to believe that the “cure” was the only way to uproot
the guerilla infrastructure. Even well-known champions of the policy of
attraction... conceded that the water cure “might be a good thing if judiciously
administered in occasional doses, provided that the antis [anti-imperialists] at
home did not find it out.”

Andrew Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860-1941,
U.S. Army Center of Military History (1998)

Spanish-American War

Major Edwin Glenn of the United States was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using the water cure. The Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession" and recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture."

Philippine-American War
Water cure was among the forms of torture used by American soldiers on Filipinos during the Philippine-American War.President Theodore Roosevelt privately assured a friend that the water cure was "an old Filipino method of mild torture. Nobody was seriously damaged whereas the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures on our people." The President went further stating "Nevertheless, torture is not a thing that we can tolerate." However, a report at the time noted its lethality; "a soldier who was with General Funston had stated that he helped to administer the water cure to one hundred and sixty natives, all but twenty-six of whom died". See the Lodge Committee for detailed testimony of the use of the water cure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cure
===========================================
On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
==========================================

Also the US did not simply prosecute Japeanese prisoners for water boarding rather one soldier was sentenced to 15 years for brutalities which included water boarding.

"McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

The folks at Politifact interviewed R. John Pritchard, the author of The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. They also interviewed Yuma Totani, history professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and consulted the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, which published a law review article entitled, "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts."

http://patriciashannon.blogspot.com/2009/04/us-executed-japanese-soldiers-for.html

The United States was not alone in prosecuting water torture before national tribunals, nor were the Japanese its sole practitioner. It is worth comparing those trials with Norway’s prosecution of German defendants for the same form of misconduct, and the
United Kingdom’s trial and execution of Japanese interrogators who used the method.

DROP BY DROP:
FORGETTING THE HISTORY OF
WATER TORTURE IN U.S. COURTS

http://tinyurl.com/mf3kbb

It's not a discussion of right or wrong but rather the outcomes.

It was the first expressly codified law that expressly forbade giving "no quarter" to the enemy (killing prisoners of war), except in such cases when the survival of the unit that held these prisoners was threatened. It forbade the use of poisons, stating that use of such puts any force who uses them entirely outside the pale of the civilized nations and peoples; it forbade the use of torture to extract confessions, or for any purpose; it described the rights and duties of prisoners of war and of capturing forces. It described the state of war, the state of occupied territories, the ends of war, and discusses permissible and impermissible means to attain those ends; it discussed the nature of states and sovereignties, and insurrections, rebellions, and wars. As such, it is widely considered to be the first written recital of the customary law of war, in force between the civilized nations and peoples since time immemorial, and the precursor to the Hague Regulations of 1907, the treaty-based restatement of the customary law of war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieber_code

"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in "Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements … was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."

The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, when the enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was barefoot and starving, credits the character of Washington and the founding fathers and puts to shame the conduct of America's present leadership.

Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King George's armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.

Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren…. Provide everything necessary for them on the road."

John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic requirement. "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."

Even British military leaders involved in the atrocities recognized their negative effects on the overall war effort. In 1778, Col. Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of Bute: "Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate."

In the end, our founding fathers not only protected our national values, they defeated a militarily superior enemy. Indeed, it was their disciplined adherence to those values that helped them win a hopeless struggle against the best soldiers in Europe.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1217-30.htm

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

Ronald Reagan
signing statement, ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984

At the same time, one cannot ignore the contributing factors of poverty, lack of education, and lack of hope. These are the petri dishes of terrorism, as are foreign political and economic control in a colonial sense. No cause gives anyone the right to kill innocent people, but some causes are also inherently just, and cannot be ignored as being so, regardless of the actions of some independent actors in the overall struggle.

It seems risible that after slaughtering over a million people and terrorizing millions more with death squads and drone attacks in the night that one would claim high moral standing and certitude.

The books: The Cell, Looming Tower and the 9/11 commission report are good propaganda because while they have a lot of true information in them they all carry the message of the US as victim of a foul attack and totally justified in the retaliation they carried out.