It’s just water
Mukasey’s formerly safe-looking confirmation as the next Attorney-General doesn’t look so safe now. I remember listening to audio of Mukasey’s evasions on the subject of waterboarding and thinking ‘are they going to let him get away with this?’ Well, no (or, at least, ‘not yet’).
It seems to me, however, that the real solution here is for the President to make clear that waterboarding is torture. Mukasey is just trying to avoid taking a position contrary to that of the President, I think; as the President is the cause of the problem, so must the solution lie with the President.
Uncle Jay, incidentally, can explain torture: