I'm all for torture, if we're all open and honest about it.
I mean, if it is cool today, if it was cool in 2001, then it's cool in 2000, in 1900, in 1100 AD, etc.
In war, you can stab, shoot, detonate, completely pinkmist people and leave them to bleed out, but you can't torture them? You can starve by ending their supplies, you can let the elements kill them, but not torture?
IMO, torture has always gone on, and always will go on. Today's warfare really is a sissified version of centuries past. Goring each other with bayonets, impaling people for a slow 3 day death in front of the town with a spear up your ass... war was waaaay more horrific in the past. So any silly talk about "it's a new kind of war, torture is *suddenly* acceptable, that's crap - if it's okay to use it to stop a 9/11 (and it might be the case), then it's okay to use it to stop a Pearl harbor or 1898 USS Maine or whatever. And we should be open about it. And we can't get mad when the enemy does it too - cause they've been doing it in Iraq/afghanistan, just as we've been using it for the past decade. It's a sad part of war, but a part that's always been there.