That Teddy...what a bear

Just to show that the Bush administration doesn't have a monopoly on torture, here's an excerpt (as quoted in Edmund Morris' superb biography Theodore Rex, as rich as a novel) from the testimony of an Army officer to the Sesnate Committee on Military Affairs in 1902, which convened to hear testimony of the abuse of Filipinos by American soldiers during the occupation:

A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit on his arms and legs and hold him down by either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin...is simply thrust into his jaws...and then water is poured onto his face, down his throat and nose...until the man gives some sign of giving in or becoming unconscious...His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but who cannot drown.

This was known as "the water cure." Sounds like waterboarding away.

There is a difference. The Roosevelt administration swiftly condemned the torture. He instructed his Secretary of War Elihu Root to dispatch this cable: Great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder, and habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture againstn our men, nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman cruelty of any kind on the part of the American army."

Whereupon Roosevelt ordered the court martial of the general who allowed the torture to happen.