"If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York? I bet they're asleep in New York. I bet they're asleep all over America."

- Humphrey Bogart as Rick in "Casablanca"

Everybody knows there are certain moral principles engraved in stone: Thou Shalt Not Kill, for example. Except of course in self-defense. Or war. Or in other cases of justifiable homicide. Don't lie, either. Except of course when the Gestapo is knocking on the door looking for the neighbors you've hidden in the attic. And torture is bad. That should go without saying, which is why every high-minded editorial page in the country seems to be saying it, for they all seem to have a knack for pointing out the obvious: Torture bad.

Ah, but what's torture - short rations? Being hooded day and night? Solitary confinement? Where does torture begin, just after harassment and just before death? Today's favorite example, issue, and shibboleth: Waterboarding! Is it ever, ever permissible? Even if it's not, do we tell our enemies they need not fear it? Such are the questions now holding up the confirmation of an exceptionally well-qualified judge named Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general of the United States.

The judge refuses to break down and say the magic words - "I won't allow waterboarding" - no matter how hard he's pressed by that Senate committee. Why not? Maybe because he suspects that, after reciting that pledge, others will be required of him until, step by step, he finds himself in the position of poor, beleaguered and mentally outgunned Alberto Gonzales.

For as counsel to the president, Mr. Gonzales found himself approving step-by-step torture memos specifying just how much torture/abuse/human degradation/minor irritation could be legally permitted. That way lies a lot of embarrassment and not much enlightenment - because it divorces such decisions from context, and therefore from reality.

Judge Mukasey may be wise enough to know that in practice the various Thou Shalt Nots depend on the circumstances, like the application of any other sacred principle. But what circumstances could possibly justify scaring a terrorist almost to death?

To cite the classic hypothetical: What if thousands of innocent lives could be saved by waterboarding one terrorist? Consider the case of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks. Word has it the he revealed al-Qaida's whole table of organization in Europe after being waterboarded.

Is there any ethically acceptable response to what has become The Great Waterboarding Question? Yes, there is: Don't deal in hypotheticals. Yes, by all means, outlaw torture, which is what the U.S. government has done, but why define it overmuch?

Instead, well-groomed senators in coats and ties and clean fingernails sit in their nice, spacious air-conditioned hearing room and tell CIA interrogators, military judges and all those whose duty it is to prevent another September 11th - and who have been remarkably successful, so far - what they may do and what they may not do when it comes to the care and feeding of terrorists.

Just where are the boundaries in this war on terror? That war has been so forgotten that some that some even object to its name. They'd much prefer to slip back into the dream of security that the country enjoyed during the 1990s as one attack after another was left to the usual criminal proceedings - before September 11th shook America awake. Continued...