Kathleen Parker on waterboarding

Bless Kathleen Parker and (at last) the Washington Post.

A reasonable account of the controversy from the mainstream press was long overdue, and Parker delivers.

Whether one agrees with the Bybee-Yoo interpretation is a difference of opinion but nothing more. Any fair assessment has to include consideration of context and distinctions that matter, including the definition of waterboarding, which varies according to country and century.

I have no interest in defending one against the other, but there are significant differences between what the Japanese did during World War II, for example, and what was authorized by the U.S. government.

The latter paragraph represents a critically important point with respect to the attacks on the practice of waterboarding. The press was guilty of promoting bad information about waterboarding, such as what it was and how it compared with past versions of "water torture" and "the water cure."

As previously noted at this blog, Judge Evan Wallach and the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law played a key role in poisoning our well of knowledge. Props to the Post for taking a notable step toward correcting the record.