This could very well be part of a larger maneuver:
The United States may use waterboarding to question terrorism suspects in the future, the White House said Wednesday, rejecting the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture.
"It will depend upon circumstances," spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding "the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider."
"The president will listen to the considered judgment of the professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique," he said. [...]
The spokesman said that the program would continue to operate under US law and "within our legal obligations with respect to" the Geneva Conventions.
Asked whether the White House's reasoning was that torture is illegal, the attorney general has certified that the interrogation practices are legal, therefore those practices are not torture, Fratto replied: "Sure."
It doesn't take a tinfoil hat to look at this development and see something repetitive. Once again, it's not torture, and we only did it three time (honest!), and only against very bad people, and it worked great. So shut up and leave us alone, and please authorize us to do it again.
It's another attempt to legalize their actions, plain and simple, by casting the best possible light on a technique favored by the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge. I guess I should not have expected any better.
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