Sometimes a dunk in the water is just a dunk in the water

Today’s Gaggle is a delight, as reporters question Tony Snow endlessly about what oh what Cheney might have meant when he agreed that a “dunk in the water” was a “no-brainer.” One might say that they snowboarded the press secretary. The White House line is that Cheney was talking in general about interrogation and wasn’t specifically endorsing waterboarding, and that “dunk in the water” could have meant anything, really.

Q I haven’t drawn any conclusions. I’m asking for an explanation about what “dunk in the water” could mean.

MR. SNOW: How about a dunk in the water?

Snow goes so far as to say that we know Cheney wasn’t talking about waterboarding because he’s such a consummate professional that he wouldn’t “slip up” and talk about specific techniques. In an all-too-rare instance of a reporter giving exactly the response that went through my head, someone pointed out that Cheney was the guy who told Leahy to fuck himself and was the guy who shot his friend in the face, so he may not really be all that perfect.

Now I said yesterday that Cheney was asserting that waterboarding is not torture, but today George “No Brainer” Bush was asked, “do you agree with the Vice President that a dunk in the water is a ‘no brainer’ when it comes to interrogating a terror suspect?” and he answered, “This country doesn’t torture, we’re not going to torture.” Note that the question didn’t contain the word torture, so Bush is the one equating waterboarding (or “a dunk in the water”) with torture. I assume any CIA interrogators who have used the technique will now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.