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George Bush could face arrest abroad after his frank admissions on waterboarding, a leading human rights lawyers has claimed.

Geoffrey Robertson said the former President was now at risk of being detained having sanctioned the controversial interrogation technique.

‘Ignorance of the law is no defence,’ he said. ‘There are countries where proceedings might be instituted against him.’

Security chiefs have already denounced his defence of so-called 'waterboarding' and disputed his claim that information obtained through it had thwarted Al Qaeda plots to blow up Canary Wharf and Heathrow airport.
Mr Bush launched his memoirs with the admission that he gave the CIA the green light to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, with the words: ‘Damn right.’

He added that a team of U.S. lawyers had said the practice was not illegal.

‘Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States,’ Mr Bush said. ‘Using those techniques saved lives.’

Tony Blair sent tanks to Heathrow in February 2003 after intelligence warnings that terrorists were plotting to bring down aircraft with rocket propelled grenades.

And in 2004 the Daily Mail revealed claims that an air attack on three towers at Canary Wharf in London was planned. It is these two incidents Mr Bush is thought to be referring to.

But his claims that waterboarding saved the day were dismissed by a series of senior officials familiar with counter-terrorism activities at the time.

Mr Bush insists that he knew an interrogation programme ‘this sensitive and controversial would one day become public’ and that ‘when it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values’.

Mr Bush has defended its use, saying: ‘Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.’ He even claims that Zubayda urged the Americans to use it on his captured ‘brothers’.

Zubaydah later told interrogators that ‘his understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation only up to a certain point’.

Mr Bush adds: ‘Waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfill his religious duty, and then co-operate. “You must do this for all the brothers”, he said.’

Although they conceded that some U.S. intelligence had been important in the fight aganst terror they believed that the President was exaggerating.

Kim Howells, who was chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee, said: ‘I doubt torture actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition. I’m not convinced of that.’

Lord MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said: ‘These stories about waterboarding thwarting attacks on Canary Wharf and Heathrow – I’ve never seen anything to substantiate these claims. These claims are to be treated with a great deal of scepticism.’

However, security sources conceded that information passed by the Americans in the years after 9/11 did help prevent some Al Qaeda attacks in the UK.

A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘We stand firmly against torture and the cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. We don’t condone it or ask others to do it on our behalf.’

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So you consider the extrajudicial executions of scores of people, and the collateral damage deaths of scores more who were innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to be less serious than the waterboarding of three people, all of whom survived it?

Could the party affiliations of the Presidents in office during these actions have anything to do with this interesting outlook/

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On March 20, 2010, thousands marched by the White House in Washington, DC, to protest the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The event was organized by A.N.S.W.E.R. and other groups. The scheduling of the event ties it to the seventh anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Participants prepared model coffins draped in various flags to symbolize fatalities of the wars.

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Minnesota peace activists focused their attention on U.S. Senator Al Franken during a Thursday, April 8 protest urging Franken to vote against a supplemental funding bill for the war in Afghanistan.

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April 15, 2010: Des Moines, IA Peace Activist Faces Trespassing Charge for Antiwar Protest at Offices of Sen. Harkin

Frankie Hughes refused to leave Senator Tom Harkin’s office during a protest of the war funding in the current appropriations bill.

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May 18, 2010: Multiple peace organizations held an anti-war protest at Representative McCollum’s office in St. Paul, MN to protest spending and escalation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. United States Representative Betty McCollum is planning on voting for the $33 billion supplemental funding bill for the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Participants included: Anti-War Committee, Merriam Park Neighbors for Peace, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Women Against Military Madness

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November 15, 2010--Anti-war protesters gathered Monday on the Southern Methodist University campus, a day before the groundbreaking for the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the protesters Monday used 175 pairs of worn Army boots to represent some of the troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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