Waterboard of Education

So…a nonpartisan, independent panel has reviewed interrogation and detention programs in the years after 9/11 and concluded that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture" and that the nation's highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it. Moreover, they say the use of torture has "no justification" and that it "damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive." They found there was "no firm or persuasive evidence" that such interrogation yielded info that could not have been obtained by other means and that much of what was extracted via such means was "unreliable."

It's pretty damning but there will be no prosecution of those who did it. Instead, we'll have a lot of people saying, "Yeah, well, but if there's even a remote chance it would prevent a Boston Marathon-style bombing in my neighborhood, we have to do more of it."