IF YOU ARE WONDERING what ever happened to torture, that thing we don’t do, chances are we still do it.

The evidence is vague. For the White House, vagueness has long been a winning strategy.

Since the Democrats took control of Congress, however, specifics have become more fashionable. Henry Waxman sits like an avenging chipmunk in his hearing room, addressing one executive-branch failing after another. Waxman heads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has amassed uncomfortable facts on federal contracts; arms shipments; prewar intelligence; White House e-mails; FEMA trailers; and the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Have the surgeon general’s office, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department been improperly politicized? Waxman would like to see the records, please.

Records of U.S. torture activity have largely been unavailable to the public. But a few weeks ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee began looking into the matter. It learned we had been taking instruction from North Korea and Vietnam, both of which applied harsh methods to American POWs in years past.

Before 9/11, the United States was strictly in the business of training personnel how to deal with such tactics. Afterward, with the blessing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we started to specialize in them.

Part of Bush’s vagueness has to do with defining torture. It seems that one man’s torture is another man’s pinprick. The administration has taken full advantage of this difficulty, applying vagueness to methods long ago outlawed.

As the Senate panel learned, a top CIA lawyer went down to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and explained to those in charge that torture is “basically subject to perception.” For clarity, he added: “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

Any questions?

In your name and mine, detainees at Guantanamo and other sites have been subjected to sensory and sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, stress positions, forced nakedness, ear-splitting noise, water boarding and more.

Reports that have filtered out describe men reduced to weeping and wailing. Those who refuse to eat are force-fed, sometimes quite painfully. Some have repeatedly butted their heads against walls, trying to kill themselves.

Last month, Physicians for Human Rights reported on 11 former detainees, none ever charged. The detainees showed evidence of severe abuse, including stabbing, electric shock, and in one case, sodomy with a broomstick. In this organization’s perception, domestic and international laws had both been violated.

Here is the vague legal terrain on which we now stand:

Last summer, George W. Bush issued an order saying the CIA was bound by the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit torture along with cruel and degrading treatment. Yet the order said nothing about specific techniques

The Army Field Manual spells out clear rules for interrogation, and bars the most egregious methods, in accordance with U.S. and international law. But though the manual governs our military, Bush this year vetoed a law that would have held CIA interrogators to the same rules.

Torture, its defenders say, can get you some good information and, in the case of al-Qaida, has. But it can also get you a pack of shaky claims, making it hard to sort truth from falsehoods. You could wind up taking inappropriate action: starting an unnecessary war, for instance.

Then too, your case against individual terrorists can fall apart. Detainees now have access to U.S. courts. And the courts have a funny way of not wanting to hear coerced evidence. Abused detainees, their hatred redoubled, could be set free, even the ones who are our worst nightmares.

We cannot know whether the intelligence gleaned from these detainees could have been extracted another way. We do know that torture can damage the torturer as well as the victim. (Ask our designated sadists about their dreams.)

We also know that when we break laws against torture, other countries feel freer to return the favor. And people everywhere will know we lie about what we stand for. They know it now, even as we down our Independence Day hotdogs and shoot off our illegal bottle rockets.

Recently, a group of 17 former government officials, all with experience in interrogation, said the administration had gone seriously astray with its vague stance on torture. It declared harsh techniques ineffective and counterproductive, and called for change.

A much larger bipartisan group of leaders, including religious figures, retired generals and former Cabinet officials, is asking Bush to outlaw abusive methods, and accept only those it would tolerate being used on Americans. This group includes George Shultz, President Reagan’s secretary of state.

Maybe these citizens were inspired by more vagueness that surfaced in April, when letters sent by the Justice Department to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden were disclosed. They said CIA officers could legally use some banned techniques if they are trying to prevent an attack.

In other words, it depends. Just like the definition of torture.

M.J. Andersen is a member of The Journal’s editorial board.