Some pundits are spinning that the now infamous "waterboarding" was something less than torture. Waterboarding is torture, and it has been against the law in the United States for 111 years.

Four judge advocates general are on record before Congress characterizing waterboarding as inhumane and illegal.

In the 1898 Spanish-American War, some American soldiers used the "water cure" against guerrilla fighters. They were court-martialed.

In 1968, The Washington Post published a photo of an American soldier waterboarding a captured Vietnamese soldier. That soldier was court-martialed.

It's not whether or not you think it's moral -- it's against the law.

Thus, in 1947 the United States tried a Japanese officer for war crimes for waterboarding an American citizen and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.

In 1983, Texas' San Jacinto County Sheriff James Parker was charged and convicted by President Ronald Reagan's Department of Justice for waterboarding prisoners to obtain confessions.

To quote Fox News anchor Shepard Smith: "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps! We are America! We do not [bleeping] torture! We don't do it!"

Mike Buchanan

Salt Lake City