“For much of history, water-boarding has been to torturers what cream is to apple pie. They go hand-in-hand. So, it seems odd that the United States is in the middle of a lively debate about whether water-boarding is an ‘enhanced interrogation technique’, as the CIA insists on calling it, or torture. Of course it is the latter, any hooded member of the Spanish Inquisition or executioner at Tuol Sleng could have told you that. […] if the debate [in the US] is to be honest it should be about whether torture is allowed in certain circumstances. […] The trouble is, we never know if it is a special case until we have finished the torturing and even then we cannot be sure. Torture becomes like an addiction, with uncertain results, that defiles the torturer as much as it haunts the tortured. The cost-benefit ratio is out of kilter. Which is why the administration has already supplied the answer to a question that America should not even be asking. We do not torture. Time to practice what you preach.” (story)