You are seriously overestimating the moral mettle of the American people.

Remember when Abu Zubaydah was taken under questionable circumstances, wounded, and subjected to denial of pain medication?

This is far more offensive that waterboarding, and there was no backlash whatsoever.

To this date, Abu Zubaydah has never been convicted of a crime (i.e. by definition he is cleaner than Scooter Libby), much less in an open and fair trial (not that we could give him one anyway).

I think you overestimate the knowledge of who the hell Abu Zubaydah is on the part of the American public.

While not rising to the level of the "language management technique" of using enhanced interrogation instead of torture, it continues to rankle that the inability of Democrats to correct on the spot the use of "democrat party"
as opposed to "Democratic Party" demonstrates the lack of spine necessary to throw this shit right back in the faces of these Orwellian language abusers at the moment it occurs.

Face it, the establishment Dems (and the Very Important Village Punditocracy/MSM) have long ago ceded the manipulation of language to the Frank Luntzes and Newt Gingriches with the result being
the spectacle Waldman writes about above. With no end in sight.

Dream on, indeed.

And yes, to invoke Orwell, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

Quite a bit of dreaming and fantasizing going on at Tapped today. Just below, Adele is in la-la land concerning Rove and Bolten:

"The Senate has the option of using the Capitol Police Force ... No Justice Department needed to prosecute those babies.... Now, wouldn't that be somethin'? (A girl can dream, can't she?)"

And here we have Paul dreaming about what a Dem candidate should say regarding the words people use.

I thought this was the reality-based community?

And Paul, I think the definition of torture you offer is a bit open-ended - there must be more to it:

"Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or mental suffering in order to obtain information or confessions."

If I spank my child to get him/her to confess to breaking a lamp (and thus accepting responsibility), this definition means that I am torturing my child. If I interrogate a suspect for a criminal offense for a number of hours I think you could call that inflicting mental suffering - but is a long interrogation really torture? In our US prisons we routinely lock inmates up for 23 hours a day. By this definition that would be torture.

Isn't it quite a bit too broad to say that torture is anything that inflicts mental suffering? And if I am correct, then doesn't that make your statement that this is not difficult to understand rather ridiculous? IMO, your definition invites confusion and further questions ... so no, this is a difficult subject. Certainly reasonable people can disagree about the definition of torture when the definition you offer is so ambiguous and incomplete.

I have a dream for a question during those debates, too: "Mr. Obama, what would you say to the parents of children who were murdered in a terrorist attack that would have been averted with information taken from a terrorist through torture?"

As I said (adapted) at Washington Monthly:
Take what Kevin quotes from here:

This is not complicated. Everyone all over the world agrees on what constitutes torture. Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or mental suffering in order to obtain information or confessions. Not hard to understand.

Sorry, no. You can't *define* torture per "in order to..." those specific things, because then, doing it just to be cruel etc. isn't "torture." Torturing for X reason is doing "torture" for X reason, not a proper definition of it.

Really, if I catch you and rip you on the rack, it doesn't really matter why I did it. (That isn't clear anyway - can you read my mind? What if I never give a reason nor have any context around it?) You and every other "decent person" are going to say I tortured you.

If we strip that purpose-bound context away, then we are left with "Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or mental suffering." Maybe, but then we have to define imprisonment as "torture" because being locked up causes suffering, seriously.

That scheme just won't work, and I don't know why you basically good writers at Tapped would be careless. A better formulation is needed.

Well, I got this from WaMo:

US Code Sec. 2340. Definitions

As used in this chapter--
(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.
~~~~~

See, no reference to purpose. So, how do we define "severe"? I suppose it's a bit like "cruel and unusual"?

This is why I continue to dream of Biden as VP. He's only good at one thing, and this is it!

To be honest, I think we lost our moral compass a long time ago. I remember in the early days of the occupation, when everything was all about the 'deck of cards', our troops were after some general or other, and he wasn't home - so they took his family into custody and held them until he gave himself up.

I kept waiting for SOMEONE to point out that hostage taking was a war crime under the Geneva Conventions - but nobody ever said a word about it. It was like business as usual.

Sorry, but "deaden our moral compass" is just real bad writing.

Aaron: Biden would make a good SoS.

I think we lost our moral compass a long time ago. I remember in the early days of the occupation, when everything was all about the 'deck of cards', our troops were after some general or other, and he wasn't home - so they took his family into custody and held them until he gave himself up. I kept waiting for SOMEONE to point out that hostage taking was a war crime under the Geneva Conventions - but nobody ever said a word about it.

dfffwwffw