My thanks to all the thoughtful commenters to my last post on torture.  I thought you might like to read the position paper on torture of the National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union.  The first paragraph reads:

The use of torture is the most extreme violation of the principles to which Ethical Culture is dedicated. Among these principles, respect and reverence for the dignity of the human being is foremost. With the emergence of torture as a component of American policy in the “War on Terror,” Ethical Culture calls for the absolute and total ban on the use of torture, whether by the military, law enforcement, intelligence services or private actors.

The rest of the paper lays out some moving and probably controversial arguments for regarding torture as the greatest ethical “sin,” worse even than murder, as well as the recent facts of torture in America as far as they’re known, and recommendations for how to go forward.