[GunRunner]

Agreed. Joking about torture isn’t funny. Dicking around with civil liberties and buying into the Bush version of the war on terror is what got us Obama.

[Norm Lenhart]

Listening to Democrats redefine torture is what screwed up the WOT. Listening to Democrats and mirroring their words id something worse yet.

My daughter survived waterboarding in the military. the poor widdle musWinbs can find a better hobby than terrorism if they don’t like what we do to them for it. As can their supporters.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Agreed. Joking about torture isn’t funny."

People say things like "watching that movie was torture" or "I'm going to nuke those ants in my backyard" or "that battle was a baptism-under-fire for many of the soldiers" or "CBS's questioning of Romney was like an Inquisition" all the time. So analogies to terrible things are common and accepted.

True, Palin's comment was much more direct than that, but waterboarding-as-baptism is fairly mild, in my opinion, insofar as waterboarding neither kills anyone nor permanently injures anyone. Thirty minutes after waterboarding, the subject can be back in his cell reading his Koran and eating his halal meal. I think the NR did sound a lot like a Pajama Boy kind of guy, and his outrage seemed forced to the point of strangeness.