Actually, waterboarding IS a dead issue

Why? Because Obama stopped doing it. At least officially, which is probably all that anyone can expect. The CIA has always been up to all sorts of illegal, amoral, and sometimes downright evil stuff. The Bush administration was only unusual in that they got stooges like John "No law or treaty can stop the government from crushing a child's testacles" Yoo to "make it legal" in the Palpatine sense. Even if all Obama did was push torture back into the shadows, that's still a victory for civilization.