On March 8, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have barred the CIA from using so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract information from terrorist suspects. This unleashed a new storm of criticism from those who equate techniques such as waterboarding with torture.

It also put the president at odds with prospective Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, who has rejected the use of such techniques, saying that if the U.S. resorts to what he describes as "torture," it will put our troops and other American citizens abroad at risk.

But is this true? Moreover, is waterboarding really torture, and should the U.S. renounce any tool that could potentially save American lives, especially in extraordinary situations where dozens, hundreds, even thousands face imminent death from a weapon of mass destruction?

To begin with, the United States rightly rejects the use of torture, defined as the infliction of intense pain from burning, whipping, crushing, the administration of electric shocks and similar abuses. By contrast, the six enhanced interrogation techniques instituted by the CIA in March 2002 are the following: the attention grab, the attention slap, the belly slap, longtime standing, the cold cell and the controversial practice of waterboarding.

Most reasonable people would have to agree that the first five techniques are, at worst, uncomfortable but hardly rise to the level of torture. They remind one of the memorable Robert De Niro line in the film "Ronin." Asked whether he had ever killed anyone, he replied, "I once hurt someone's feelings." The first five techniques, with such methods as sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and constant noise, are far from torture and fall in the category of things more likely to hurt someone's feelings. They are tools that should be available to well-trained American interrogators on a limited basis and under appropriate supervision.

During the Cold War, some American allies, chiefly in the developing world, employed reprehensible and highly abusive interrogation techniques that jeopardized their standing in the world community and threatened U.S. military and development assistance. American instructors knew that it would be futile to simply tell these countries not to use torture. Instead, they would have to learn new techniques that didn't leave lasting physical scars on the subject but would be equally, perhaps even more, effective. Waterboarding, ironically, was one of the techniques taught as a substitute for torture.

Under all circumstances?

Even if one believes that waterboarding should not be practiced by the United States, does that mean under all circumstances? What if a bomb has been hidden aboard a school bus and there is not enough time to find it? Do we simply write off the lives of the children on board, or do we use an extreme technique to avert an unfolding tragedy?

Even more to the point, what if there is solid intelligence that a chemical, biological or radiological weapon has been smuggled into one of our great cities and set to detonate in an hour? The probable consequences are dire: thousands dead, the U.S. economy severely damaged, the public and policy-makers so traumatized that they are likely to take precipitous action, perhaps even a nuclear strike, against the nation that harbored the perpetrators. Is that really what we want, or should the president have the authority to use extraordinary means to try to prevent such a catastrophe before it occurs?

There is evidence that key al-Qaida operatives subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques gave up highly valuable intelligence that pre-empted terrorist attacks and saved lives. Many commentators marvel that the U.S. has not suffered another devastating terrorist attack in the wake of 9/11. This didn't just happen, but rather is attributable to the aggressive tactics employed against our adversaries.

Americans were understandably repulsed by the deplorable interrogation techniques employed by young, poorly trained and supervised, and often sadistic, soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In 2006, the Army banned the use of enhanced interrogation practices such as sensory deprivation and waterboarding.

This was the right decision. The military, especially young reservists, are not the right people to use such techniques. The U.S. should employ them only with presidential authorization. Interrogators should come from the intelligence community, be highly trained and skilled, and be carefully monitored and held accountable for abuses.

'All the options'

Former U.S. Ambassador Winston Lord tells of joining Henry Kissinger's National Security Council staff when he was a young man. Kissinger assigned him to come up with an options paper. When Lord dutifully delivered the paper, Kissinger sniffed at it and threw it back across the desk saying, "You don't have all the options."

Lord took a second crack at it and submitted a revised draft. Kissinger rejected it a second time. "You still don't have all the options," he growled.

Lord, completely flummoxed, responded: "But sir, I worked harder on this paper than any I've ever done. I have every option I could come up with. What am I missing?"

Kissinger replied, "You didn't include surrender or nuclear war."

"Sir, I didn't consider those options," replied an incredulous Lord.

"Remember this," retorted Kissinger. "Everything is an option. Everything."

And so it should be for the president with respect to aggressive interrogation. The president, as commander in chief, should have whatever tools are necessary to address a serious threat to our national security, even if those tools are never used.

We entrust the president with nuclear weapons; surely we can trust the president to authorize the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in times of national emergency. And it's a good policy for terrorists not to know what restraints we are operating under; they're more likely to talk early if they fear that anything can happen to them.

As to John McCain's argument that if we use such techniques, they will be used against us, it should be noted that our jihadist adversaries operate under no restraints whatsoever. Just as they cut off journalist Daniel Pearl's head, so they routinely employ torture against captured U.S. citizens. They commit horrible atrocities every day and regularly boast about their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Against such an enemy, we need some flexibility.

In his great novel "The Brothers Karamazov," Fyodor Dostoyevsky frames the conundrum we are faced with: "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature. ... Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" In the end, every man and woman, just like every president, will have to confront this stark and disquieting issue and come to their own conclusion. I can only speak for myself and know what I would do.