What if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Had Died?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. We practiced sleep deprivation on him for 11 straight days. I don't know how many times we smashed his head against a wall, slapped him in the face, put him in a stress position in a freezing room and/or put him in a coffin sized box in extreme heat. But the right-wing argues that it doesn't matter because none of this is torture. They are adamant in saying that it is not even open to interpretation.

Because, remember, if it's at least open to interpretation, we should investigate to see if laws were broken and we crossed the line into torture. Their logic is that this is so obviously not torture that it does not require any investigation at all! It's an open and shut case.

Obviously, I disagree. It's one thing to admit that this appears to have crossed the line but you have no problem with that because we should be torturing the bad guys to get information out of them (that is a less morally defensible position but at least it's logically consistent). But it's another thing to claim that all of these "enhanced interrogation" techniques are nowhere near torture.

So, let me ask you this -- what if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had died during one of these extreme interrogations?