Waterboarding: The Best Defense

Okay, we've moved the ball a little bit on the subject of waterboarding. After an unseemly period of dodges and feints adding up to "We don't torture, so whatever we do isn't torture", CIA Chief Michael Hayden told a Senate committee on Tuesday that his agency had, indeed, used the "enhanced interrogation" practice on three detainees over a two-year period. But he had an excuse for this practice, which historically the United States had treated as a war crime when it was practiced by others:

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

So, the only reason we utilized a technique which we used to define as a war crime is because we thought we needed to. That defense is as rock-solid as that attributed to Willie Sutton when asked after his capture why he robbed banks: "because that's where the money is."