In a White House speech on September 6, 2006, President Bush mentioned the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees in the war on terror, referring to the techniques as an 'alternative set of procedures.' "What Bush did not describe was exactly what the 'alternative set of procedures' were. He did not disclose that [9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times and [al-Qaeda operations chief Abu] Zubaydah 83 times. Nor did he describe how Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi accused of directing the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, was waterboarded twice and threatened with a power drill and a loaded handgun in a mock execution; if Nashiri did not talk, he was told, 'we could get your mother in here.' Bush did not describe other techniques, including forced nudity, slamming detainees into walls, placing them in a dark, cramped box with insects, dousing them with water as cold as forty-one degrees, and keeping them awake for up to eleven days straight. He rejected the notion that all this constituted torture. 'I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world,' Bush said. 'The United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it.' This reassurance, however, meant only that as long as he and his lawyers determined a tactic was not torture, then he could say he did not authorize torture, even if it was deemed torture by the rest of the world."
– Peter Baker, Days of Fire, 486