None Dare Call It Torture

Speaking of increased pressure on Obama to allow an investigation into the Bush torture regime, Steven D over at the Frog Pond makes a key observation:

When are we going to stop reading these euphemisms for torture? Just today I've read "interrogation techniques", "aggressive interrogation techniques", "harsh interrogation techniques" and "intelligence techniques" (which has to be the most laughable one yet). If the news media can't bring themselves to call it what it really is "torture techniques" let's at least call them something a little less oxymoronic. How about we start calling them "False Confession Techniques"? At least that one has the benefit of being more truthful regarding the reason torture has historically been employed than the rest do. It certainly explains why Bush and Cheney authorized torture.

In fact the Village seems to be stumbling all over itself inventing grand new phrases to make a despicable act sound clinical enough to be a routine medical procedure...or a routine legal one.

I'm honestly not sure which is worse, the acts themselves, or the verbal gymnastics used to defend the government. Call a spade a spade and move on. After all, when the Defense Department finally releases over the next month the photographs of torture and abuse of prisoners at Iraqi and Afghan prisons by US personnel, we're going to run out of euphemisms.