Reply #3: Democracy is about cutting deals. But this was not a deal with cutting.

[Bucky]

Whether Bush has a wingnut sycophant aggreeing to his torture policies for the next 15 months or a conservative intellectual reluctantly agreeing to them for the next 15 months is not a big difference. The variance in the differences is not great. This is a compromise that didn't produce worthwhile results, except maybe allow Schumer to pick up some hollow chits from his Republican colleagues.

He's right that if Congress outlaws waterboarding, the AG will enforce that law. The ace in the hole is that it'll take 67 senators to pass a law like that. I'm normally the big compromiser on this board (for which, in grand DU fashion, I get called a dupe or a nazi with some frequency). But this was a bad deal. Schumer gained nothing; Bush gained everything.