Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Waterboarding has been seen as torture since the Spanish Inquisition. US Soldiers who were caught waterboarding in the Philippines in 1901, or during the Vietnam War, in 1968, were put on trial. When done by other governments the US has not failed to call it torture. The Bush administration maintained it was not bound by the constitutional test outside of the United States. Justice Antonin Scalia had said in an interview with the BBC that he did not see anything in the constitution that prohibited torture of detainees. Not when it was for the purpose of gaining information. He said it would be unconstitutional if it were inflicted as a punishment, however. At his inauguration in 2009, US President Barack Obama pledged to end “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA and to close Guantánamo through executive orders.