A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

The practice of waterboarding was used by the CIA to break Al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Detainees had water poured over their face until they feared they would drown. President Barack Obama has since outlawed the practice.

Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after being seen walking around his neighbourhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows.

Police discovered the alleged waterboarding when they went to his home in the Tacoma suburb of Yelm and spoke to his girlfriend.

She told them about the alleged torture and the terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat.

Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: ‘Daddy did it.’

During a police interview Tabor allegedly admitted grabbing his daughter, placing her on the kitchen counter and submerging her face into a bowl of water.

Sergeant Rob Carlson said the punishment was carried out because the girl would not recite the alphabet.

Police have not revealed Tabor’s military service, but his base is home to units that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tabor has been charged with assault and ordered to remain on his base and have no contact with his daughter or girlfriend, who has not been named. He is due to appear in court this week.

The girl has been taken into care. Her natural mother lives in Kansas but Tabor had been granted custody by a court.

After three decades of (admittedly uneven) progress towards full human rights, women now must contend with the agenda of Stephen Harper. The Prime Minister’s disdain for women’s equality is one of the most dramatic examples of his wider assault on democracy.

[…]

In the very first year that Stephen Harper was prime minister he moved in many ways to halt the course of progress for women. His government summarily cancelled the multi-billion dollar national child care program that the previous Liberal government had spent years negotiating with the provinces (and women’s groups had fought for, for decades). It also had the support of the vast majority of Canadians.

This program was hardly a radical proposal. Canada is one of the most backward countries among Western developed nations regarding early childhood education. This program would simply have begun to close the gap.

[…]

Other cuts were part of a one billion dollar assault on things that the Harper government didn’t like, and were implemented in spite of the fact that his government had inherited a $13 billion surplus. Amongst the programs eliminated was the Court Challenges Program (CCP), one of the most effective and innovative programs in the world promoting and facilitating human rights. The CCP had, since 1978, provided funding for individuals challenging government legislation that was discriminatory. In short, it made constitutional rights, and rights under the Charter, accessible to ordinary people. Amongst its major beneficiaries were women. To ensure that it would not have to accept any outside, citizens-based advice on changing the law, Harper also eliminated the $4 million in funding for the Law Commission of Canada, formerly the Law Reform Commission.

The government also closed 12 out of 16 regional offices of Status of Women Canada across the country as well as eliminating the $1 million Status of Women Independent Research Fund. Changes were imposed to the criteria for funding for the Status of Women Canada’s Women’s Program which precluded support for advocacy or lobbying for law reform. That meant that dozens of women-run NGOs would no longer receive funding because virtually all of them combined advocacy with the provision of services — such as women’s shelters advocating for an end to violence against women.

[…]

In 2009 the Harper government took pay equity backwards when it introduced the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act. According to human rights advocates the bill emptied “the right to pay equity of its meaning. The new legislated criteria for evaluating ‘equitable compensation’ will reintroduce sex discrimination into pay practices, rather than eliminate it.” The law (passed by stealth by placing it in the 2009 budget where it could not be voted down) introduced additional criteria that would allow public sector employers to consider “market demand” in determining compensation — in effect ensuring higher pay for men even if the work was of equal value.

[…]

If there was any doubt that it was Stephen Harper’s personal determination to set back women’s equality, Garth Turner, a Conservative MP who eventually left the caucus, left none. He told the Georgia Straight: “[Harper]said, ‘We have determined a series of cuts, … which will be announced…. They are our position. And…anyone [who] has got any problem with that — who says anything about it — is going to have a short political career.’ He said that in caucus.”

Remember.