Waterboarding Bush?

State Rep. Rod Driver, generous soul, says he will donate $100 to charity for every second that W., Dick Cheney and Condi Rice agree to undergo waterboarding.

From the Westerly Sun:

In correspondence sent by certified mail, the Richmond resident asked three former officials — President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — to undergo waterboarding for charity. All three have asserted that the technique, which simulates drowning, is not torture.

Typed on paper with the state’s official letterhead, the letters were mailed to Bush in Crawford, Texas; to Cheney in Wilson, Wyoming; and to Rice at Stanford University in California last Saturday.

The Sun could not confirm they were received as of Wednesday evening.

“You must be confident that waterboarding is not torture,” wrote Driver, a member of the Rhode Island House Committee on Judiciary who represents Richmond, Charlestown and Exeter. “So I expect you will be willing to do what Sean Hannity has volunteered to do — experience it yourself. I promise to give $100 to the charity of your choice for each second you personally tolerate waterboarding.”

“The video will be particularly valuable since the [Central Intelligence Agency] says it destroyed the tapes it made of actual interrogations,” he added. “The firsthand experience will put you in a stronger moral position to continue to advocate ‘enhanced interrogation’ of captives and you will quickly raise thousands of dollars for your favorite charity.”

A Democrat who voted for independent Ralph Nader in the 2008 presidential election, Driver said he considers waterboarding a punishable offense. The method was used by the Japanese in World War II, resulting in war crimes prosecutions before the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, according to The Washington Post.

“If anyone did that to me, I’d confess to the attacks on 9/11, the sinking of Lusitania [in 1915], or anything else they want to hear to get them to stop,” Driver said. “I’m outraged that my country is stooping to this level. The Spanish Inquisition is what I think of when I hear about these methods.”