I’ve got to get some work done so I can’t get bogged down in this again, but I would like to clarify something: the argument about “legalizing torture” misses an important point: that’s not what the legalizers think they are doing. Their point is that they do not want to torture and therefore they want a definition of what counts as torture and what does not, so they know where the bright line is.

It steals a base to say that the Bush Administration wants to legalize torture because you first have to demonstrate that what they want to do is torture. I think it is a perfectly defensible and honorable position to claim that waterboarding, sleep deprivation etc. amount to torture. I don’t think I agree with that view. But I certainly believe it is made in good faith. But the good faith ends when the same people then issue blanket and sweeping assertions that the people who want to legalize those actions are simply pro-torture. If the legalizers were simply pro-torture they would favor hot pokers, iron maidens, finger-nail-yanking and the rest. And the people supporting the use of waterboarding (in a tiny number of cases) aren’t doing that. Not only do they think they’re not in favor of torture but they objectively oppose things they consider to be torture. So even on the “anti-torture” crowds’ own terms, the worst that could legitimately be said is that Bush wants to legalize “some torture” while banning most kinds of torture.

I understand this all sounds like hair-splitting, but part of the point of my column was that we don’t have a good terminology to discuss this stuff clearly. So one is forced to take a razor to the clumsy language we do have.