Republicans have turned the clock back on human rights by 60 years, according to an expert.
"In 1947, the U.S. sentenced a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, to 15 years of hard labor for using a form of water-boarding," Maureen Byrnes, Executive Director of Human Rights First, said.
Water-boarding, a method of torture where the victims are subjected to mock drowning, was sanctioned by US Vice President Dick Cheney last year, and endorsed more recently by Republican Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani.
"Such actions are abusive and illegal, rarely produce reliable intelligence, and cause the United States to lose the moral high ground,” she added in a statement regarding Republican candidates’ discussion of interrogation techniques in the debate held May 15, 2007 in South Carolina.
At the debate, all republican candidates apart from John McCain vowed to carry on with torture.
"This discussion focused on the so-called 'ticking time bomb' scenario, which is a fundamentally flawed hypothetical and not a sound basis for making policy," Byrnes said. "In this context, references to 'enhanced interrogation techniques' are a euphemism for abusive treatment."
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