The latest liberal trend seems be getting waterboarded and then declaring that it's torture.

Code Pink has done it.

Some of the posters at the Democratic Underground have done it.

One of the columnists at the HuffPo has done it.

...which begs a question.

If waterboarding is really torture, why are so many people happy to publicly endure it?

I mean, consider other techniques that everyone can agree constitute torture. For example...

* Is anyone willing to have bamboo shoots driven under their fingernails?

* How about having their feet severely beaten and then being forced to stand for hours?

* What about having your toes broken, one right after the other, with a hammer?

Why is that the very same people who will happily endure a waterboarding and then write about it would never agree to do the same thing with the tortures mentioned above?

Simple: because waterboarding, unpleasant though it may be, isn't torture. It's not fun, but it doesn't take very long, it's not humiliating, and it doesn't do any permanent damage. The very same people who were getting waterboarded in public and calling it a "war crime" were probably drinking a coke, eating a tofu hot dog, and yukking it up with their friends 20 minutes later.

That's why the whole debate over waterboarding is silly, frivolous, and trivial -- particularly given that Al-Qaeda tortures our soldiers to death and dumps their bodies in the desert.

If the worst thing that our enemies did to our troops was waterboarding, it would be like a dream come true.