Attorney General-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. said in his confirmation speech before the Senate Judiciary Committee that waterboarding is torture.

This method of interrogation used during the Bush administration to obtain information from terrorism suspects was interpreted differently by Republicans. Mr. Holder, Barack Obama’s pick for attorney general, also pledged on Thursday that he would seek to prosecute in American criminal courts some prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Mr. Holder said that, as soon as he’ll be appointed attorney general, he will initiate an extensive and immediate "damage assessment" to fix the problems caused by the Bush administration in the Justice Department. He added that the incoming Obama administration plans to make some major corrections from the current policies.

As for the interrogation method known as waterboarding, Mr. Holder was very unequivocal in saying that it amounts to torture. He urged the committee to look into the U.S. history and see that several American soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War were prosecuted for using that method which was considered torture back then.

“Waterboarding is torture," concluded Holder, who blamed Bush for abusing the prerogatives of his presidency by circumventing the law in the case of waterboarding.

The Bush administration admitted that waterboarding was used several times by the CIA when they needed to obtain information from high-value Al Qaeda suspects.

Waterboarding is a form of torture that mainly consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent.