Via Matt Yglesias, we see that the Decider thinks waterboarding isn’t torture so long as it’s done by “highly trained professionals are within the law.”

Here’s a way I think we could end this whole controversy.

The Decider doesn’t want to come out and say we’re waterboarding, though as Yglesias notes, everyone knows we are waterboarding. The right, of course, insists that this isn’t torture (though plenty on the right probably do consider it torture, and in fact think our enemies should be tortured, maybe with techniques that go far beyond waterboarding).

But the Decider himself could end this whole debate by offering to undergo waterboarding himself. Live. On national television. And if it’s not cruel and unusual, it it’s no big whoop, we’d all be able to see so with our own eyes; and the Decider himself could set the moral example, because since we’re the wonderful magnanimous United States and would never really hurt anyone, then a little waterboarding certainly wouldn’t hurt him. Right?