Former British intelligence chairman all but calls Bush liar, says waterboarding didn’t stop terror

[RamboLiberal]

A former British government minister who also led the House of Commons Intelligence Committee threw cold water on claims made by former President George W. Bush that waterboarding saved British lives.

The ex-minister, Kim Howells, all but accused Bush of lying in a radio interview. He said he wasn't convinced that waterboarding produced intelligence that helped foil terror plots at Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf, in London, though he agreed that the plots were real. Howells is currently a Labour MP and served as a foreign minister of state from 2005 to 2008.

“I don’t think there was any doubt there were real plots,” Howells told the BBC Radio 4 Today. “Where I doubt what President Bush has said is that this, what we regard as torture, actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition. I’m not convinced of that.”

He also said, without qualification, that waterboarding was "torture," and that Bush simply wanted to "justify what he did to the world."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/british-minister-calls-bush-liar-waterboarding-stop-terror-plots/