I busted on Keith Olbermann’s torture Special Comment on Tuesday. Now via Olbermann Watch, it looks like the central point of that long-winded tirade was, surprise, bogus. As in wrong. Made up.

Here’s what Olbermann said Levin concluded: “Waterboarding, he said, is torture. Legally it is torture. Practically it is torture. Ethically it is torture. And he wrote it down.” Then he got fired, naturally…

According to the ABC News report Olbermann cited, Levin did not decide that waterboarding by the U.S. is torture; he just thought we were doing it wrong. “Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision,” wrote ABC News’s Jan Crawford Greenburg and Ariane de Vogue (emphasis added). “And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.” In other words, the man whom Olbermann believes “should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now” for making a liar of Bush about torture apparently thinks that, in principle, waterboarding is perfectly legal.

Here’s video of the Comment, if you can stand it.