The New York Times has ended its longstanding policy of avoiding the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other techniques under its interrogation program. The Justice Department has denied the CIA’s actions met the legal definition of torture. But on Thursday, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet wrote that since no one is facing prosecution, the current debate is less about the legal terms and more about whether the techniques were effective. He wrote: “So from now on, The Times will use the word 'torture' to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information.” Parts of a long-awaited Senate report on the CIA’s torture program are due out soon.