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That he vetoed it is his right as the President. However was it the right move might not be. Does the waterboarding save lives that couldn't have been saved by other non torture means? I think probably not. Since many generals and security experts say that torture is wrong and can actually cause others to go against us should say something. That McCain has pushed for the bill that outlawed waterboarding should say something. Another opinion that was posted on Military.com:
What do Gens. Mattis and Petraeus say?

Since the Army/Marine manual FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency was authored on their watch, we can turn to it for doctrine. From page 7-9:
quote:
Lose Moral Legitimacy, Lose the War

During the Algerian war of independence between 1954 and 1962, French leaders decided to permit torture against suspected insurgents. Though they were aware that it was against the law and morality of war, they argued that:
This was a new form of war and these rules did not apply.
The threat the enemy represented, communism, was a great evil that justified extraordinary means.
The application of torture against insurgents was measured and nongratuitous.
This official condoning of torture on the part of French Army leadership had several negative consequences. It empowered the moral legitimacy of the opposition, undermined the French moral legitimacy, and caused internal fragmentation among serving officers that led to an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1962.

In the end, failure to comply with moral and legal restrictions against torture severely undermined French efforts and contributed to their loss despite several significant military victories.

Illegal and immoral activities made the counterinsurgents extremely vulnerable to enemy propaganda inside Algeria among the Muslim population, as well as in the United Nations and the French media.

These actions also degraded the ethical climate throughout the French Army.

France eventually recognized Algerian independence in July 1963

At base, this argument is problematic.

Unfortunately, the notion that terrorists would adhere to an international standards has no basis in reality.

In much the same way that terrorists use human shields and fire from crowds at Israeli or American soldiers, so too do terrorists cloak themselves in the protections of "international law."

Yet they never offer those protections to U.S. servicemen. Indeed, they do not even recognize those protections for civilians.

Indeed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl.

If waterboarding can somehow be equated with a beheading, we have lost all ability to discern up from down, left from right. In our moral and cultural relativism, we've lost the capacity to reason.

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Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.

In my humble opinion, there is one and only one issue that matters in this debate. If we allow what the vast majority of knowledgeable sources consider to be torture, we legitimize torture as a weapon against us.

Have the intellectual debate about what constitutes "torture" all you want. By all means, discuss whether this decision constitutes presidential overreach. But for heaven's sake, remember that there are men and women in uniform who live and die by this idea. If you want to put our servicemen and women in danger, if you want to send the message that torturing one or two terrorists is worth the potential for any captured American to suffer the same, then support waterboarding. What this country needs is an unequivocal reaffirmation that we treat prisoners of war humanely and with dignity. We are deciding more than the fate of terrorists - we're deciding the fate of our guys, too.

NYT:

The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.

I am a couple of time zones ahead of you, Jim. I know you're superhuman, but I ain't: Body's gotta sleep.

That said, let me offer up a couple of observations:

* In his effort to set up a contrast between our saintly and sinner selves, McCarthy overreaches, I think, presenting victory in Afghanistan and Iraq as settled fact ... when, I think, the fact that we're still fighting there shows that's not actually the case. I think any reasonable definition of "freedom" includes freedom from reasonably fearing every day that you could be killed in a bombing.

But McCarthy has to overstate the good side of what we've done in order to not merely express that his opponents are wrong, but to make them look ridiculous.

* I was actually somewhat relieved that we've waterboarded only three people. (I will, for the moment, give the administration the benefit of the doubt.) That's not what bothers me about Bush's veto on Saturday. What bothers me is that he has clearly reserved the right to keep on waterboarding -- even though the practice is clearly illegal under any reasonable reading of our torture laws and international agreements.

I linked to this Obsidian Wings post at my blog, but it's worth repeating here:

To support Bush’s veto, you essentially have to reach two conclusions. First, you must think torture is morally and legally acceptable in prescribed circumstances. Assuming you do, though, that's not enough. It's necessary but not sufficient. To support Bush's position, you must also think that the federal government is capable of exercising this awesome power in a responsible way.

In sum, the problem with approving torture isn’t merely the heinousness of the acts themselves, but the impossibility of administering them fairly and correctly. Traditional conservatives used to believe that unfettered, opaque executive power is inevitably abused. They were right – that’s the nature of the beast.

* McCarthy also makes the (I'm sure completely unintentional) mistake of treating waterboarding as the only form of torture we've used. We all know better than that. America's reputation isn't endangered because of just three examples. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

* Finally, Chuck: "Nuts?" We're trying to get people not to do name-calling around here. You're smart and articulate; I think you can make your points without insulting your opponents. That's what this site is all about, after all.

Andy McCarthy of NRO calls the anti-waterboarding nuts out.

Here's the question he poses.

How can it be that people who claim to worry so much about America’s reputation in the world think they somehow advance that reputation by obsessing over something that virtually never happens, and in the process libeling our government as a programmatic torturer?

Here's the summation of his argument.

I’m not a fan of the Bush administration’s democracy project, but isn’t there something ironic in the fact that the United States since 2001 has freed 50 million people from tyrannical regimes, yet all the “America’s reputation” crowd seems to want to talk about is waterboarding — three instances, or, if you like, one waterboarding of a complicit terrorist for every thousand innocent people killed on 9/11?

Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.

Yes. Your bad. Assume the fetal position and await Joel's wrath.

But my (short) answer is still: No overreach on the merits/rationale.

Now I await Joel's wrath. But I'll take it like a man.

By definition, a veto is no overreach of presidential powers. So the answer to the question in the headline is "executive privilege" — that is, if you want to call powers laid out for the executive in the Constitution a "privilege."

By that standard, Congress was expressing its "privilege" to pass laws when it sent this bill to Bush's desk.

(I'm just being a piker because Joel has been known to rake me over for word choice in headlines ... (grin) ...)