Tortured imagination

Michael Goodwin:

Here's an idea for the ivory-tower philosophers in Congress: As soon as they get done torturing Michael Mukasey over waterboarding, perhaps they should turn their energies to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Or maybe they can figure out what happened to Judge Crater or who shot Liberty Valance. Solving any of those cases would be more entertaining and less harmful to national security.

Though late last week, key Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced their support for Mukasey, his confirmation is still uncertain — because he won't say clearly that waterboarding is both torture and illegal under American and international law. He should stick to his guns because his reasons are sound — he doesn't know exactly what techniques the classified interrogation programs use, and there may be legal jeopardy questions involved.

But there's an even better reason he shouldn't give the answer much of the Senate wants. The demand is nonsense of the highest order; one that can only undermine the national effort in a time of war. Why should we spell out for our enemies, on TV no less, exactly how far interrogators can go? Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those times. Leaving something to the imagination can be an effective tool in fighting a war in which the rules of civilization don't neatly apply.

Either that, or let's send a brigade of nitpicking lawyers to Iraq and Afghanistan and let them fight the terrorists with their legal briefs.

...

The imagination thing works. When my kids were terrorizing each other I would threaten them with "unpleasant consequences" if they did not stop it. It was a surprisingly effective threat because their imagination was apparently much scarier than what I would actually do. Sometimes ambiguity has its virtue and one of those times is when you are trying to extract information from people who want to commit mass murder of non combatants.