UN Blasts White House on Waterboarding

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- The United Nations' torture investigator criticized the White House Wednesday for defending the use of waterboarding and urged the U.S. to give up its defense of "unjustifiable" interrogation methods.

The comments from Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on torture, came a day after the Bush administration acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding was used by U.S. government questioners on three terror suspects.

Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the suspects were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.

"This is absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law," Nowak said. "Time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable."

The White House on Wednesday defended the use of waterboarding, saying it is legal — not torture as critics argue — and has saved American lives........