If this is the kind of thing we do to the detainees at Gitmo, we’re no better than they are. We have become what we hate.

Anonymous law enforcement and military officials revealed that F.B.I. interrogators provided Al Qaeda suspects with “food whenever they were hungry as well as Starbucks coffee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” The Washington Post wrote in a front-page article.

Starbucks? See, that’s how it goes. You start with the loud music, and that works for a while. Then you progress to waterboarding, and that gets something but not everything out of these guys. You know they know more than they’re telling, and you’re desensitized because you have already started down the road to brutality. Then you have to bring out the big gun — bitter, always burned Starbucks coffee. You have become a savage.

Update: On a serious note, the Senate voted today 51-45 to ban waterboarding and other interrogation methods. President Bush vows a veto, setting up the attack ads this fall. Bush isn’t on the ballot, but as Obama said in his Wisconsin speech last night, the war is on the ballot. So is John McCain, and he voted against the bill.