Neither Obama's speech nor Cheney's was particularly flush with strategic insights: They were too forceful for anything like that. And both men, speaking before friendly audiences, pushed a little too hard. Obama invoked his status as commander-in-chief to guarantee that no lives were endangered by giving up waterboarding, as if his status alone could make it so.Likewise, Cheney repeatedly declared that waterboarding is legal - and constitutional, and carefully vetted - as if simply asserting it could make it so (Cheney apparently is relying on the idea that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to enemy combatants).