Conservative dismisses waterboarding as a ‘swim lesson.’

On Wednesday night on CNN’s The Situation Room, conservative columnist and “Republican strategist” Rachel Marsden dismissed worries over Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s refusal to say waterboarding is torture, saying “One man’s torture is another man’s CIA’s sponsored swim lesson.” Watch it:

As Steve Benen notes, earlier in the interview, Marsden claimed that history would look kindly on President Bush in the same way it had vindicated Joseph McCarthy.

UPDATE: Marsden’s analogy is reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh’s distasteful contention that Abu Ghraib was nothing more than guards “having a good time,” “blow[ing] some steam off.”