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Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

Obama had the audacity to say, 'I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.' Ladies and gentlemen, torture in the United States has always been illegal.

Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing.

I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.

If you are sentenced to torture for a crime, yes, that is a cruel punishment. But the mere fact that somebody is tortured is - is unlawful under - under our statutes, but the Constitution happens not to address it, just as it does not address a lot of other horrible things.

There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.

President Obama was right to ban torture, but the public must understand that this decision carries a potential cost in lost information. That's what makes it a moral choice.