I apologize if this has been covered in detail at DailyKos before (which it almost certainly has) but I've been looking around and couldn't find much written about it recently, here or elsewhere. And even if it has been covered here recently, I think it's good to be reminded that the reason the Bush Administration approved these interrogation techniques is not because they didn't consider it torture. They approved these techniques because they were less likely to leave physical evidence. That seems to be a huge piece of the story missing in the media.
It's something I've thought obvious for a long time, but in the month since more details about the Bush-approved interrogation techniques emerged, there's been little discussion in the media about why these specific techniques were approved, other than to repeatedly assert that they're somehow more "humane" than other forms of torture. Which they aren't.
(Diarist Cenobyte pointed out that Mary Matalin essentially made this assertion again today.)
The approved techniques listed in the Time above article:
attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding
These techiques can cause as much agony and terror as the more physically brutal forms of torture. But with the approved techniuqes, the torturers can hide the evidence. And the lack of evidence/scarring has the additional benefit of not offending the delicate sensibilities of the media, allowing them to describe the techniques, shrug their shoulders and say, "well, it can't be that bad!"
Again, I apologize if this is overkill, and I'm not a bigger expert on torture than the next guy. But this seems to be more or less common sense, and I don't think it can be stressed enough. While all the torture apologists are running around defending Bush/Cheney with arguments about approved versus not-approved techniques, and the CYA justifications, the important thing to remember is they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they were very specifically trying not to get caught doing it, or at the very least find some back-door legal justification for it.