To torture or not to torture?

If you've been reading The Reaction at all in recent months, you'll know that I'm firmly and absolutely against torture and that I think there ought to be a firm and absolute ban against it. See, for example:

• Cheney the torturer -- "Relentless moral cretinism"
• Bush: "We do not torture"
• Spain to investigate U.S. rendition of prisoners (with links to all my posts on the issue of torture)

Instapundit has a solid round-up here. I also recommend Michael Kinsley's latest piece at Slate, which carefully (and, in my view, successfully) takes apart Charles Krauthammer's reprehensible argument for torture -- see here.