We can give Michael Mukasey this much credit: Unlike Alberto Gonzales, he isn't a liar. When it comes to the subject of torture, he's not lying -- he's just evasive. So, in at least this one respect, he would be an improvement at the Justice Department.

But that doesn't mean he's fit for the job.

Mukasey finds his nomination in peril because he has been trying to do before the Senate what the Bush Administration has done for years before the American public -- deny charges of torture by redefining the term. It's a Clintonian type of word-parsing with horrific implications: "We get to define the word 'torture.' Our definition excludes anything we do. Therefor, we do not torture."

If only we all could take such liberties with the language: "I wasn't speeding, officer. It was an enhanced driving technique!"

So Mukasey plays dumb on the question of waterboarding, pretending that he doesn't know whether simulated execution by drowning qualifies as torture. That way, should he get confirmed, the administration can keep on doing it, and he can say, with a straight face, "We don't commit (what I have on the record defined as) torture."

Lest anyone, like Mukasey (or Rudy Giuliani), harbor any doubt as to the morality of waterboarding, consider what Sen. John McCain -- who knows a thing or two about torture, has to say on the subject:

... if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating. The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal. In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture

That Mukasey is unable or unwilling to say as much means he's unqualified for the office he seeks. It is the attorney general's job to define the application of the law. Mukasey's refusal to do so in this instance will only foster a climate of lawlessness, which is the last thing you want out of any elected official, let alone the nation's top lawyer.

And President Bush's defense of Mukasey -- "It doesn't make any sense to tell an enemy what we're doing" -- is preposterous. Bush says all the time that we don't torture. Is that telling the enemy "what we're doing"?

Well, in a sense, it cold be -- if Bush were actually telling the truth.