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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.

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.

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

Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

Even if torture works, what is the point of 'defending' America using a tactic that is a fundamental violation of what America ought to mean?

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 torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

Regrettably, it has become clear that torture of detainees in United States custody is not limited to Abu Ghraib or even Iraq. Since Abu Ghraib, there have been increasing reports of torture.

'We don't torture' is the anguished cry of squishy people who have decided that trying to frighten terrorists by roughing them up is somehow the very definition of torture.