Bush bragged about detainee's capture whose torture he secretly authorized.

About the time President George W. Bush was boasting of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s capture in late 2002, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing was undergoing waterboarding, according to top-secret documents released in a New York federal court case.

One heavily censored page of what appears to be a CIA internal report about the torture of “war on terror” detainees reads: “Interrogators administered [redacted] waterboard to Al-Nashiri.”

The same page indicates that a dozen of 92 destroyed videotapes of the CIA’s interrogations were of detainees undergoing brutal treatment. “There are 92 videotapes, 12 of which include EIT [enhanced interrogation techniques] applications,” the page says. [Please see this investigative report on the Justice Department's legal memo authorizing extraordinary renditions].

Though U.S. officials confirmed more than a year ago that al-Nashiri and two other detainees were subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding, the page, which was released on Friday, represents rare documented evidence that the technique, regarded as torture at least since the Inquisition, was used against prisoners in American custody.

On Dec. 3, 2002, President Bush cited the capture of al-Nashiri as an important victory in the “war on terror.” In a speech to an excited crowd at the fairgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana, Bush declared:

“The other day we hauled a guy in named al-Nashiri. It's not a household name here in America. I can understand why some go blank when they hear his name. But he was the al-Qaeda commander in the Gulf States.

“Let me just put it to you this way: He no longer has the capacity to do what he did in the past, which was to mastermind the USS Cole that killed – the plot on the Cole that killed American soldiers. He's out of action for the good of the world.“Sometimes you'll see it and sometimes you won't. But you've got to know that in this war against terror, the doctrine stands that says, ‘Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.’”

Last year, the Pentagon formally charged al-Nashiri, a Saudi, with "organizing and directing" the Cole bombing. However, the case is now under review because President Barack Obama has barred continuation of cases under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Read on from The Public Record.