Just to add to Kathryn’s observations, it is very unfortunate that waterboarding has consumed the interrogation debate. According to the most credible reports it’s probably been used on a grand total of three detainees (the U.S. has detained tens of thousands for greater and lesser durations) since late 2001, and it probably has not been used in about four years. Congress — especially the Democrats, but Senator McCain and some others on the GOP side — have not engaged in straight-talk: they have not banned it specifically (in fact, a provision that would have done that was voted down) but then they insist that they have already banned it via loose terms like torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments. That insistence does not bear out when you look at the fine print (i.e., the statutory definitions and the caveats attached when the UN Convention Against Torture was ratified).

For its part, the Bush administration has not helped — insisting that we never “torture” with an indignation that induced reasonable people to assume we would never use close-to-torture tactics like waterboarding … and then of course to be surprised when it emerges that we have; and preferring secret legal memos to a public debate it could win. On the latter point, I fully understand that we don’t want to reveal our methods to the enemy; but you cannot continuously have a situation where the public is led to believe that Congress passes statutes which the president signs off on only to appear to have the Justice Department tweak, modify or — as critics claim — reverse those statutes in top-secret guidance. For one thing, the administration’s defenders are placed in an impossible position because all helpful facts cannot be discussed publicly. (Thus, for example, is the Left allowed to portray use of waterboarding as systematic when, in fact, it is almost never used.) There is no reason at this point that waterboarding cannot be debated publicly.

Finally, what roils me about Sen. McCain on this issue is his demagoguery. None of us likes torture or even most lesser forms of coercion. There are times, though, when some degree of coercion is necessary — even Sen. McCain has acknowledged that. McCain thinks, however, that a categorical ban on coercion is the best way to minimize its occurrence — i.e., he acknowledges that illegal coercion would still occur, but he assumes it would not be prosecuted if it actually resulted in preventing an attack. I think McCain’s way will inevitably result in more torture because it is a nod-and-a-wink approach that will (however inadvertently) promote disrespect for the law, the atmosphere in which lower-ranking officials are apt to engage in more torture.

I understand his point that departing from a categorical ban is potentially a slippery slope. But I think recognizing the limited circumstances in which we’d permit coercion, requiring that only the president and a few high-ranking cabinet officials could authorize it, providing notice to Congress when such approval has been given (so there’d be accountability), and aggressively prosecuting any prohibited coercion that occurred outside that framework, is the best way to minimize the instances of coercion/torture — which is what we should all want.

I can respectfully disagree with the McCain approach but still recognize that it has a lot of merit and is a good-faith effort to prevent unwarranted coercion. I don’t understand why he can’t give the other side of the debate that much credit, and why he instead has to malign us as torture-mongers. This is a serious debate in a time when intelligence is our only real defense against terrorists, and it has never been served by dropping rhetorical bombs, as the Senator is inclined to do in his righteous my-way-or-the-highway mode.