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Former president Bill Clinton has told NBC's Meet The Press that America needs more intelligence agents who make their own rules and engage in whatever actions are necessary like Jack Bauer from the fictional TV show 24 .
When I joined the staff of Human Rights watch six years ago, I assumed I would be spending most of my time dealing with outrages committed by governments in countries like Sudan and China and Burma, and urging the United States to be a force for good in such places. I never imagined that I would see my own government engaging in the kinds of activities it has long condemned around the world: disappearing prisoners in secret facilities for years without any legal process, sending them to be interrogated in countries where torture is standard practice, and subjecting them to interrogation methods that I first learned about while reading accounts by Soviet dissidents of what they endured in KGB prisons.
Some of the prisoners were subjected to what the administration has euphemistically termed “enhanced interrogation.” These methods reportedly included “water boarding” – in which interrogators strap the prisoner to a board with his feet above his head, cover his mouth and nose with cellophane, and pour water over his face to create the sensation of drowning. They also apparently included a technique known as “long-time standing,” in which a prisoner is forced to stand motionless for up to 48 straight hours, and extreme sleep deprivation for days on end – methods that survivors of some of the world’s most brutal regimes have said cause as much suffering as the worst physical torture.