WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) -- The Bush administration did not research the "waterboarding" torture technique enough to realize it had been deemed ineffective by U.S. trainers, sources say.
If they had done so, they would have found that experts had found that waterboarding, in which trainees were made to experience near-drowning as part of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, program, was useless. The technique was part of the Cold War-era military survival training and when used, on U.S. volunteers, produced false confessions, the New York Times reported Wednesday.