George W. Bush should be prosecuted for his admissions in his memoir that “water boarding is not a form of torture,” according to American anti-war activist and left campaigner Cindy Sheehan.

Ms Sheehan made the comments in Dublin last night ahead of a public meeting Socialist MEP Joe Higgins about the “world wide collapse of capitalism”.

Comments in the new memoir by former US president George W Bush that water boarding is not torture showed he need to be prosecuted, she said.

“To admit he committed these things in writing shows he and his administration need to be prosecuted” she said.

The anti-war campaigner lost her eldest son, Specialist Casey Sheehan, during his service in the Iraq war in 2004.

According to Ms Sheehan, despite an unemployment crisis, people losing their homes and education being cut, the United States spent a trillion dollars a year on the military.

“Nothing had changed much around any of these issues even though there was a new administration who claimed to want to reduce troops,” she said.

“Not for me out of any sense of revenge but for the future. We have to hold these people accountable so these things happen, they are still happening,” she added.