Oh, Well Then, That's OK Then

HuffPo:

in a new interview (alongside John Ashcroft) with Dan Abrams, Gonzales showed little sign of regret. He said he objected to President Obama's release of the now-infamous torture memos because those techniques "may be necessary in the future." Asked specifically if waterboarding was torture, he said:

"I think that the U.S. government provided advice to CIA interrogators based upon the best legal reasoning by the lawyers in the Department of Justice. Was it torture, when that advice was given? No. Were the interrogations harsh? Yes. Did they save lives? Absolutely."

John Ashcroft defended his successor, saying "the word waterboarding can be defined in a lot of ways." He added that "I don't think they got it wrong. It's different now ... Because the law has been changed." In fact, the law hasn't changed -- something Ashcroft acknowledged after the interview.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, a fourth-grader questioned Condoleezza Rice on waterboarding. She too claimed that nothing illegal was done.

"But [President Bush] was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country."