A short while ago the President of the United States vetoed a bill that was meant to prevent torture. It was supposed to outlaw torture in general and waterboarding in particular, but you can count on the incumbent US senate to screw up everything they touch. They passed a bill that "limits the treatment and interrogation techniques for anyone in U.S. custody to those authorized by the U.S. Army’s interrogations manual." (2) "creates a new Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC), subject to Senate confirmation, makes other positions subject to Senate confirmation." among other things.
Let's break those things down. Their goal was to prevent torture instead they limited "the treatment and interrogation technique ... to those authorized wd by the US Army's interrogatino manual." It means the only things that the President can order are those things written in the manual. The question is; who writes the manual? and who controls what is added or removed from the manual? You guessed it. The president. Search online for "Bush vetoes waterboarding bill" and see what you'll find. But take a look at this document http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/ConfReportHighlightsHR2082IntellAuthActFY20.... It document what exactly the bill was meant to do.
The second part that created new IG's in organizations which already has IG's only unnecessarily increases bureaucracy. It's like the senate wanted to appease people by claiming they paseed something and i'm apathetic that the President didn't sign it. Shameless, you may say, but anyone who has been following this congress would know that, from Larry Craig to this latest bill; shameless has been the middle name of this congress.
The manual itself is pretty ridiculous. Torture is defined pretty ridiculously as well. (I wrote about it more in depth here http://www.progressiveu.org/013249-us-versus-them-how-innocents-are-sent... if you feel like reading more about it).
Terrorists, Spies and people who commit serious treason are mostly all trained against interrogation. So many a time the only way to save lives is to use "Alternative Methods" as some may say torture. But water boarding has never killed anyone or caused medical damage. It just got the intel needed to keep our rights and our lives.