Undoing McCain Already

I see that my prediction in my post yesterday on the McCain anti-torture legislation came true even more quickly than I imagined. The New York Times reports that as soon as the Bush-McCain deal had been announced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "made it crystal clear that the administration would define torture any way it liked."

He said on CNN that torture meant the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental harm, and repeated the word "severe" twice. He would not even say whether that included "waterboarding" - tormenting a prisoner by making him think he is being drowned.

Meanwhile, as the Times points out, there are all kinds of other problems with the bill to which the McCain amendment is attached, not the least of which is the suspension of habeus corpus.