The Democrats and their cohorts on the political left have accused the Bush Administration of being pro-torture for waterboarding three al Qaida members, including Khalid Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

(See this edit in today's WSJ.)

The rough interrogation of these terrorists led to the prevention of other attacks and the saving of American lives. But Democrats want to punish the government officials who permitted these information gathering techniques.

The Democratic congress could move to outlaw waterboarding but it does not. Why? For fear that the public would blame them if there is another terrorist attack. In any case it would make them look soft on terrorism and national security, which they are.

The left boldly claims that America is "less safe" today than it was before 9/11. But there hasn't been another al Qaida-type terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland in 7 years, thanks, in part, to the aggressiveness with which the Bush Administration has attacked the terrorist havens overseas.

I think that success in prevention has led too many Americans to fall into a false sense of security. But we'll see this fall. If we elect a man as inexperienced and seemingly naive about foreign policy as Barack Obama (it took Hillary Clinton to expose him) I think we'll regret it.

In any case, the "torture" narrative put out there by Democrats is completely out of sync with common sense and common morality. It is perfectly justifiable to inflict pain on a terrorist to glean information of an imminent terrorist attack. Those who say such techniques don't work have to explain why they worked so well and so quickly in the cases of Khalid Mohammed and others.

NSA experts are on record saying that the information waterboarded out of these three "saved lives."

High ranking Democrats from Jay Rockefeller to Nancy Pelosi were informed that such techniques were being used to extract information and didn't object at the time. Only now that it is politically expedient do they wish to hold their political rivals' feet to the fire. It doesn't get much more craven than that.

Recall the book and the film "The Day of the Jackel," in which a member of anti-Charles de Gaulle group is captured and brutally tortured for information about a suspected assassination plot. All that his French interrogators get out of him is the whispered word "Jackel," the code-name of the assassin. But it leads to the saving of their president.

Granted that was fiction. But the use of very rough interrogation techniques even by democratic governments was (and is) not. They are only justifiable in the rarest and most extreme circumstances. But they are justifiable, experience and common sense tells us so.

Again, if the Democratic left thinks such techiques should be outlawed, let them propose legislation to that effect. Let them be specific about what torture is, why waterboarding is torture, and pass a law against it.

They won't. Watch and see.