George Bush waxed philosophical in a recent interview regarding the moral question of the utilitarian value of torture.

“If you’re in my shoes, and you thought Abu Farraj al-Libbi had planned an attack on America, would you use any means necessary to get the information from him?” Bush asked. “The decision I have made is ‘No, we will not.’ And let’s just pray he doesn’t have that information. And when I told the American people we’re not torturing, we’re not torturing.

“But try that on for an interesting ethical dilemma as the President of the United States,” he added.

Leave aside the continuing scandal of the US’s use of torture in its prisons and concentration camps, and the weak amusement afforded by the thought of George Bush pondering ethical dilemmas with serious intent, leave aside even the factual falsity of Bush’s statement (as only casual attention to recent news makes heartbreakingly clear, we are torturing; we were torturing, and very likely at his impetus, at the time Bush said we were not, and, to all appearances, we are continuing to torture to this day). It is a new infuriation that this administration - infatuated by torture as it has been through its highest levels - still seems to regard the worst abuses of the most inhumane regimes as mere policy options for this once-great nation. Under George Bush, “we’re [supposedly] not torturing” not because it violates the most fundamental principles of international law, not because it violates treaties and charters the US itself helped write and are still (Attorney General Albert “Torture Boy” Gonzales notwithstanding) legally in effect, not because it’s grossly immoral (even granting highly dubious “ticking time-bomb” scenarios that have never actually been encountered in real life), not even because it’s ineffective - but merely because Bush himself decided we won’t, for now. Torture is something he decided we wouldn’t do - after thinking about it - a decison he regards with apparent wistfulness.

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