Of course, even if these legal opinions are deemed so baseless as to constitute something like material support for torture, Garzon still has to find that torture in fact occurred at Guantanamo. It doesn't look promising for the accused on that front. After demanding the extradition of two British citizens to stand trial for acting as al-Qaida operatives in Madrid, Judge Garzon canceled the process once he saw reports from British doctors. He found at the time that the "inhumane conditions" at Guantanamo Bay had so badly damaged the defendants that the "progressive deterioration of their mental condition" rendered them unfit to participate in their trial.

Nor would anyone envy the defense attorney who had to argue that no torture took place on the island. The charges made about U.S. detention conditions are awful, and more evidence emerges almost weekly. The conceded instances of water-boarding are in some ways the least of it. Long-term sleep deprivation and extremes of hot and cold for months on end. Indefinite solitary confinement. Death threats for detainees and their family members. Black-site detainees locked in coffin-size boxes. And that's on top of ordinary physical brutality that almost seems banal in comparison to the more insidious forms of torment. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, the "there's no way we'd do that" instinct no longer has quite the force it once did for many.