You can find the essay here.

http://www.stevendixon.net/text7.htm

“On the Friday noon news lead-in to Here and Now, referring to waterboarding, the on-air announcer defined it as, “what critics call torture.” Only critics? How about “what international law calls torture, what the Geneva Conventions call torture, what the U.S. government has prosecuted as torture . . .”
“Has NPR entered the world of doublespeak? Congratulations on buying into the Republican world view.
“I expect if, in the future, an American is captured and waterboarded by some hostile group or government, you will not say s/he has been tortured. After all, if we do it, it must be OK.”

No response yet . . .

hegemon had a breakdown of that:

http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.....nster.html

did neocons take notes on how to emulate hitler?

justifiable? ha, good luck with that.

Read Krauthammer today in WaPo.
He just comes right out and says it.
He uses a really stupid example of a so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario but it works for him. he’s not backing down.

justifiable? ha, good luck with that.

according to the daniel moynihan rule, once the opposition starts employing your semantics, you’ve won the argument.

@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: Right on. They say they are trying to be neutral, but waterboarding and some of the other shit has been defined, by law, as torture for quite a few years now.

NPR and the NYT are trying to sit on the fence over whether or not we should prosecute the previous administration for war crimes. This editorial ambivalence would be much more difficult to sustain should they choose to call a crime a ‘crime.’

And this has been pissing me off to no end. Since when did NPR and NYT (or any other media outlet for that matter) have the authority to redefine definitions of words and what constitutes a crime? I thought that was the job of the judiciary. The next time I hear a story about a bank robbery, I want the media to refer to the incident as an alleged act of “extreme financial self-enrichment”. Because calling it a “robbery” would make it a criminal act and thus open for prosecution. Just like the torture advocates say when they try to justify their position, the robber may have been poor and resorted to robbery simply to save his/her family. Why can’t we just keep on walking, considering the noble intentions of the robber?

What a joke.

Also note that when they bring out “experts” to say that the torture worked, those “experts” all seem to be people in the CIA - i.e., the people who did the actual torturing and are the ones who stand to be punished (and have professional careers railroaded) should the torture be publicly called torture.

That’s like putting someone on trial for murder, and letting the defendant’s lawyer say “actually this case is just about guided life rearrangement.” And everyone else saying “oh yes, good point. Guided life rearrangement. And he should know, because he’s working for the guy who was there and did it!”

As for the use or non-use of the word torture, it has been amusing to watch the GOP try to say what we did was not torture, but that Nancy Pelosi was informed about it, so if it was torture, it’s her fault. Man, do they hate her.

Just like I hate the editing feature here when it tells me I can’t edit my own post.

And, of course, Mr. Dobson’s including bisexuality on that list in the first damn place is patently false. Read the first point here.

I am shocked and appalled that a deeply religious man such as Mr. Dobson would lie to further his political agenda. Shocked, I tell ya!

I’ve been doing this mental trick of replacing the word torture with rape.

You mean harsh love making. Please, we’re trying to have a serious conversation here, and using loaded words for enhanced love making just proves that you are shrill and biased.