"Torture" is what waterboarding is called now. That is the current legal interp, so fine, I'll go with that. While I attended the Army SERE school at Ft Bragg and did not have to endure waterboarding personally, the Navy school did it as a matter of course to our own people as training to help them prepare for situations where they might have to deal with real torture. When Bush made his decision, waterboarding was a training tool. The lawyers believed it to be legal. A president has to make hard decisions, and I doubt this was really that hard of a decision in the big scheme of things under the perspectives, legal and otherwise, that waterboarding was held in at that time.

Now, after the fact, it has been deemed to be "torture." I'm not a big Bush defender, but I won't bash anyone for not playing by rules that haven't been written yet. Again, waterboarding was a standard training tool for US service members in SERE and deemed as legal by the experts. This is not an issue, this is not news. Now, if the President had been told it was Illegal and gone on and ordered it anyway, then it would be news.