Is Everyone At The NRO Really This Dumb?

Andrew C. McCarthy, responding to beating criminals instead of imprisoning them, argues that the idea

dovetails with a thought experiment I’ve been pushing for a while now, in rebuttal to the claim that waterboarding (as it was administered by the CIA on three top al-Qaeda detainees) is torture. If you gave every inmate serving, say, two years or less in prison the option of being waterboarded or completing his sentence, what would he choose? I’d be stunned if less than 95 percent chose waterboarding.

If I agree to be tortured instead of imprisoned then it isn't torture, is the pith of this argument. It's sort of like arguing that if a president does something then it's not illegal. Or because it's unlikely any American soldiers will be injured in this war therefore it's not a war. It's almost as if no one cares in particular about making sense so long as they can say something.