Too late. The Bush legacy as a 21st century torturer is already cemented, but we’ve got a flip flop on waterboarding:

A senior Justice Department official says laws and other limits enacted since three terrorism suspects were waterboarded have eliminated the technique from what is now legally allowed. “The set of interrogation methods authorized for current use is narrower than before, and it does not today include waterboarding,” Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, says in remarks prepared for his appearance Thursday before the House Judiciary Constitution subcommittee. “There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law,” he said.

More after the jump…

It is the first time the department has expressed such an opinion publicly. CIA Director Michael Hayden stopped short of making a similar statement in testimony about waterboarding before Congress last week. Bradbury in 2005 signed two secret legal memos that authorized the CIA to use head slaps, freezing temperatures and waterboarding when questioning terror detainees. Because of that, Senate Democrats have opposed his nomination by President Bush to formally head the legal counsel’s office.

So three years ago, this guy allowed torture, now he says it isn’t legal. What changed? The law they claim but in reality it’s because they got busted, that’s what changed. Vintage Bush administration double speak. And, as we all know well, just because anyone in the Bush administration says something, it doesn’t mean it’s true.

How many times did Bush tell us the U.S. doesn’t torture? He lied.