Photo-Ops are designed to insulate politicians from questions--as the name implies they are opportunities for film and video, not interrogation. So it says something about the White House's sensitivities these days that the President used a photo op to declare that, "This country doesn't torture, we're not going to torture. We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that will be helpful to protect the country."
Mr. Bush was trying, of course, to undo Dick Cheney's uncharacteristic honesty, when he admitted to a conservative talk-show host in Fargo, North Dakota, that the United States has used water-boarding on al-Qaeda detainees. (Cheney may have been lulled into relaxing his guard by his interviewer's question, "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Calling water-boarding a dunk in the water is like referring to being burnt at the stake as getting a hotfoot.)
Not that it really matters what the President says; Americans are finally wise to him. The most charitable interpretation of Mr. Bush's veracity would be to use Churchill's description of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin: "Baldwin occasionally stumbles over the truth, but he picks himself up, dusts himself off and hurries on as though nothing had happened."
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