"Waterboarding, daddy? Is that like boogie-boarding, or surfing?" "Hahaha. My goodness, that's rich, what a precocious little notion. But no. Waterboarding is in no way like boogie-boarding, surfboarding or anything else you have ever or will ever experience in your sheltered, pampered life."

"So," the boy said, "they went to some outside consultants to decipher the anti-torture laws?" "Not consultants," I corrected, "a two headed monster." "Right... two-headed monster. But what if the two-headed monster was wrong in its interpretation? Or worse, deliberately wrong? Like corrupt, what if the two-headed monster was corrupt?" "Oh ho ho, you precocious little so-and-so, let's read on and find out!"

"Okay," said the boy, "this... I already have a problem with this."

"Nope," the boy said, "no, no, no. Uh uh. Nope." "Calm down, you precocious thing," I said. "It's just a fairy tale."

"Slow down for a second, daddy, this is... there's a lot, here. So, no one would be held accountable?" "According to Uncle Dicky's plan." "How would Uncle Dicky know to do that in advance? How would Uncle Dicky know to make a list with so much built-in wiggle room? And how would he know that Bybee Bradbury would see things his way? It all seems so convoluted. It just requires such tremendous foresight." Look at that vocabulary. Six-years-old. No way this kid's mine. "Well, son, in the way that a talented engineer can look at a broken computer and know exactly what to do to make it work, or in the way that Michelangelo can look at a slab of marble and in it see the magnificent Statue of David, Uncle Dicky can look at a terrorist, some crooked lawyers and a poorly-written international law regarding torture and see in it an airtight, effective plan for covering the collective ass of his administration." The boy scratched his head. "Did...  did you just compare Dick Cheney to