Go read hilzoy

Please go read hilzoy on waterboarding:

That we are even having a debate about this question, and that it is not a foregone conclusion that someone who claims not to know whether waterboarding is torture cannot possibly be confirmed as Attorney General, is a testament to the moral degradation of our country, and of our political discourse. …

Imagine what we would think of a country where candidates for high office and nominees for the highest law enforcement position in the country had earnest debates about whether or not the rack was torture (“hey, I do stretching exercises before I go jogging, and it doesn’t hurt me!”), or whether disembowelling living prisoners shocked the conscience (“I had my appendix out, and I’m doing just fine!”) We would think that the people who said such things had utterly lost their humanity. Yet for some reason, altogether too many of our fellow citizens seem to think that it is perfectly acceptable for politicians and their appointees to have the same debates about waterboarding. I suspect that future generations, and the current inhabitants of other countries, will regard this the same way we would regard people who took it to be an open question whether the rack was torture: with abhorrence.

She supports this with a detailed explanation of the “controlled drowning … controlled death” of waterboarding from Malcolm W. Nance, “a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training” at the Navy’s SERE school in San Diego, who states:

“Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period.”

Go read the whole thing. I have nothing to add except “what hilzoy said.”