MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress," Arbour said.

The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing passages to simulate drowning.

Arbour referred to an arrest warrant issued in 1998 by a Spanish judge for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, on charges of torture, murder and kidnapping in the years that followed his 1973 coup.

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.


    
excerpt form
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

 1787
again I know I'm in trouble again for reading  this but hey why not once upon a time it was not illegal
We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,

Article 1 Section 8. The Congress shall have Power to....
To define and punish Piracy's and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

ARTICLE 2
Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office
 on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery,

 or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.



Article 6
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof;
and all Treaties made,
 or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States,

 shall be the supreme Law of the Land;

 and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, 


Score one more for Bush and Company........  so when is Congress going to get off the ass's and do there job