The Senate had a chance to settle the question in September 2006 when Sen. Ted Kennedy offered an amendment to declare waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. His amendment lost 46-53. So Senate Democrats are now demanding that Mukasey declare waterboarding a violation of Common Article 3 when the Senate declined to do the same just a year ago.

The current Republican standard is that if the Congress does not explicitly forbid specific torture techniques as illegal, then they're legal. They hold that the clear and broad legal standard - "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" - is too broad and too clear to accommodate what a handful of men, i.e. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, et al. want to do with prisoners under their control. ]]>