So the news of secret 2005 Justice Department memos authorizing CIA interrogation methods described as torture by previous administrations is merely a "flap." So says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial warning that the "coercive" methods outlined in the memos are abhorrent only to congressional "scolds" who invoke America's "values" (those last quotation marks belong to the Journal).

On the same page, columnist Bret Stephens accuses those outraged by the memos — and the president's insistence, before and after the memos were leaked, that "this government does not torture people" — of "moral bullying."

It is important to remember the double outrage of the secret memos. First, the president insisted, in the wake of another leaked memorandum in 2002 that said torture "may be justified," that he stood for no such thing. Second, the memos themselves add to the litany of abuses, going back to Abu Ghraib, that have severely compromised America's moral standing among its friends and the higher moral ground it tries to hold under assault from its enemies.

Stephens invokes CIA assurances that torture methods such as "waterboarding" (call it what it is — simulated drowning) have been effective in foiling perhaps "dozens" of terrorist plots. He also asks the Clintonesque question, "What do we mean by the word 'torture'?" It is impossible to confirm the interrogators' claims, which seem dubious in the face of reams of expert testimony that physical coercion rarely if ever yields useful intelligence.

As for defining torture, the Journal suggests it is a tough one to pin down, since such admittedly "brutal" methods as head slapping and manacling prisoners in stress positions are mere "pressure tactics."

But is it really so hard to define torture? How about this: Let's define it as the kinds of interrogation and intimidation methods that any sane American would consider an outrage if inflicted on our own soldiers. Which of the methods outlined in the leaked memos would we allow under that test?

But to even ask the question that way is to stand accused of "moral bullying." What an odd juncture this war has brought us to — when conservatives begin to belittle the "values" for which America stands.