Brick Wall

I never thought I'd say, but kudos to Bill O'Reilly. He questioned Bush quite aggressively about waterboarding, and didn't back down. Andrew Sullivan has the excerpt.

His superb efforts notwithstanding, O'Reilly did not get any actual information out of the obfuscator-in-chief. Bush almost comically defiant in answering O'Reilly's questions.

O'REILLY: Now Brian Ross of ABC said — reported the CIA water boarded Mohammed. That is dunked him in water, tied him down and then that broke him. Is that true?

BUSH: We don't talk about techniques. And the reason we don't talk about techniques is because we don't want the enemy to be able to adjust. We're in a war.

O'REILLY: Is water boarding torture?

BUSH: I don't want to talk about techniques. And — but I do share the American people that we were within the law. And we don't torture. We — I've said all along to the American people we won't torture, but we need to be in a position where we can interrogate these people.

O'REILLY: But if the public doesn't know what torture is or is not, as defined by the Bush administration, how can the public make a decision on whether your policy is right or wrong?

BUSH: Well, one thing is that you can rest assured we're not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don't want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.

Re-read the answer to that last question. Question: How can the public judge your policy if you refuse to tell us what your policy is? Answer: "You can rest assured" we won't tell you the policy!

Gosh, I'll rest easy! That's not an answer, that's Bush telling me he won't answer and I better like it, dammit! I suppose I should thank him for the privilege that he deigned to tell me that much.

Of course, substantively, Sullivan notes that any terror suspect who hasn't figured out that waterboarding is a possibility is a moron. So Bush's refusal to say exactly what policies he is implementing "to make America safer" isn't because it's a security risk. It's because Bush has a pathological fear of oversight. And given some of the abuses that haoccurredred and have been endorsed under his watch, I'd say he has good reason to fear.