Just keep it legal, boys, he said. And they all knew exactly what he meant:

The disclosure that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 that the torture of al Qaeda terrorist suspects might be legally defensible has focused new attention on the role President Bush played in setting the rules for interrogations in the war on terrorism.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush set broad guidelines, rather than dealing with specific techniques. “While we will seek to gather intelligence from al Qaeda terrorists who seek to inflict mass harm on the American people, the president expects that we do so in a way that is consistent with our laws,” McClellan said.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said in a May 21 interview with The Washington Post: “Any time a discussion came up about interrogations with the president . . . the directive was, ‘Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.’ ”

“I felt my job was to make sure that the president had all the tools available” Gonzales said. “As part of that, we obviously looked at what can we do in terms of treatment, in terms of interrogations with the enemy that we’ve captured.”

“Let’s just say they won’t be causing the United States of America any problems anymore.” - Bush, January 2002 State of the Union address.

Nudge nudge, wink wink.