"Our Torture Was Kinder and Gentler"

Holy crap. Just when you think they've covered every possible variation of dishonesty and truth-twisting possible, they go through the wormhole to a whole new universe of What The F**k?:

The CIA's use of waterboarding was legal and not torture, a Justice Deparment official argued this morning, because it was a "procedure subject to strict limitations and safeguards" that made it substantially different from historical uses of the technique by the Japanese and the Spanish Inquisition.

Aw - ah - oh- no - please - please make it stop. The truth can only be tortured for so long before we all lose our minds. I's a different kind of procedure than the Japanese and Spanish Inquisition techniques. That's our new American standard. We're not as bad as the really bad torturers.

I wonder if they devised kinder and gentler rape techniques. And friendly fingernail extraction.