Why Waterboarding Cannot Be Torture

We now have at least one opinion concerning why Judge Mukasey cannot admit that waterboarding is torture:

“You would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it,” said Mr. Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke. “Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that’s why he’ll never say it’s torture,” Mr. Silliman said of Mr. Mukasey.

Torture allegations have already come back to haunt former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Human rights groups in France have filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr. Rumsfeld approved of torture at US run detention facilities in Iraq and Cuba.

An editorial in todays NYT also proposes that Mr. Mukasey is trying to protect Pres. Bush.

And yet the nominee for attorney general has no view on whether it would be legal for an employee of the United States government to subject a prisoner to that treatment? The only information Mr. Mukasey can possibly be lacking is whether Mr. Bush broke the law by authorizing the C.I.A. to use waterboarding — a judgment that the White House clearly does not want him to render in public because it could expose a host of officials to criminal accountability.

But we all should agree that torture of humans is nothing when compared with consensual sex in the White House. Many believe that the world could use more BJ's and less torture.