Waterboarding a "No Brainer" for Cheney

Dick Cheney's strongest yet advocacy for the United States to torture prisoners. The worst part is its really not even shocking any more. Here's the "dunk" question and answer from the White House transcript, where Cheney calls waterboarding a "no-brainer"

Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.

He aknowledges that torture is a no brainer, then instantly says "we don't torture." This is a sort of language, used consciously, to normalize the concept of waterboarding, and over time erode the preception that it is torture.

Regarding waterboarding, here's the Wikipdeidia definition. Here's an October 2006 Washingtonpost article raising the question of whether waterboarding is legal or not.

The photo at the top, by the way, is of one of the Khmer Rouge's water-board tanks. If its good enought for Pol Pot, its good enough for the Unites States of American in 2006.