"Scumbags who didn't respect the Geneva Conventions"

That used to be other people, like the North Vietnamese and the former Soviet Union. Here is a former Air Force linguist describing his training in the early 80s:

"Our trainers were careful to instruct us on the Geneva Conventions and which interrogation techniques were covered and which were illegal. I have a very clear memory of what they said about waterboarding. As I recall, water boarding was classified as torture and was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. They told us about the technique for the simple reason that the North Vietnamese used it on American Forces. They wanted us to know about that technique in case we were ever captured by 'scumbags who didn't respect the Geneva Conventions.' There were no demonstrations; it was considered too traumatic.

I'm not making this up. The military trainers at our Survival School had nothing but contempt for techniques like this, and we were taught that they were international criminal offenses. We were also warned that there were groups out there who did not respect international law and wouldn't hesitate to use techniques like these to get the information they wanted. "