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Super Tuesday -- and let's let that be the last time I use that phrase until 2012 -- obscured, to some extent, the White House admission that, as we all knew, American forces had used waterboarding on suspected terrorists. And that the White House reserves the right to use it again, if it deems necessary.

In the most detailed public comments on a CIA program that had been shrouded in secrecy for years, Hayden said the agency had used simulated drowning to extract crucial information from terrorism suspects in 2002 and 2003. He also testified that only three detainees were ever subjected to the method.

Just to sum up: Waterboarding is torture. That said, I guess I'm weirdly relieved -- assuming we're being told the truth -- that the U.S. isn't waterboarding every detainee to come down the pike. And in saying they were concerned about imminent follow-up attacks to 9/11, administration officials are betting that most Americans who dislike the idea of torture aren't going to make a fuss if it's done under a ticking time bomb scenario. Although, as Spencer Ackerman notes, the actual waterboarding took place about nine months after 9/11. With the fresh shock of the attacks starting to recede at that time, it seems the result is that the door is always open to the justification of torture under the "ticking time bomb" scenario. Because we never really know, do we?

And that's where Dick Cheney's "one percent doctrine" starts us out on the proverbial slippery slope. Applied here, it means that if it's in the universe of possibilities -- no matter how remote that there is a ticking time bomb, we should react as though there definitely is a ticking time bomb. But lawyers have a good saying, too: "Bad cases make bad law." You shouldn't start governing your society based on the outliers, because you'll muck up the normal functioning of society. That's at odds with the Cheney doctrine, and I'd say it produces better results.

That said, let's also remember that waterboarding isn't the only form of torture that's out there -- or that has been used against suspected (but, oops, innocent) terrorists. The administration might've pulled off a coup -- by admitting to rare waterboarding, it may have been able to pull the whole torture debate out of the spotlight.