As Michael Mukasey starts his stint in the Attorney General chair, he might want to include a couple of history texts in his reference library, just to help him out on his fuzziness regarding waterboarding.

Because apparently, this technique was debated as a form of torture during America’s colonial ware in the Philippines, more than a century ago. And if the “water cure” from those days wasn’t definitively identified as torture, then it certainly was by the Vietnam era.

So if the issue was already decided decades ago, why the confusion? Is it because of the supposedly new terrain that the War on Terror represents? Mukasey will have to hash that one out as he guides the Justice Department during the remainder of the Dubya years.