Mary Jo White was US attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan from 1993 to 2002. The following paragraph is hers:
Although, as a civilized people, our immediate and commendable instinct is to declare waterboarding repugnant and unlawful, that answer is not necessarily correct in all circumstances. The operative legal language (both legislative and judicial) does not explicitly bar waterboarding or any other specific technique of interrogation. Instead, it bars methods that are considered to be "torture," "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" or that "shock the conscience."Are we to take this for a piece of rigorous legal reasoning? Waterboarding may not be unlawful in all circumstances because...? Because the operative language doesn't explicitly bar it; it only bars methods that are considered to be torture. So, is White saying that waterboarding isn't torture, or is she merely trading on the meaning of 'considered' - in such a way that any method of inflicting pain, terror of imminent death, etc, can potentially be turned into non-torture? Such a move would, of course, rob the prohibition on torture of any force at all. (Via.)