By any other name

I heard a news report on the way home tonight that just set my teeth on edge. Even on National Public Radio, they refer to waterboarding as a "harsh interogation technique."
It is torture. Why can't we in the media call it what it is? Just because President Bush refuses to admit we're torturing people doesn't mean we're not. Why won't we call it what it is? Is it because the president's supporters might get mad at us? To me, it's our duty as watchdogs to say what's true. And what's true here is that we're torturing people. We prosecuted the Japanese after World War II for waterboarding people because it was torture. It was then and it is now. Let's call it what it is and quit pussy-footing about.
I know we Americans don't want to be the bad guy; we want to believe we always take the moral high ground, but we don't. We torture people, and our leaders ought to face whatever consequences come from that.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves here. The first thing here is that we need to admit we're doing the wrong thing by using torture, The information we get as a result is unreliable at best. Study after study has shown that. It's wrong to torture.
One of my main arguments against this behavior -- our acceptance as a country of torture -- is that this is the message we send to our children.
Children pattern their beliefs and behaviors after those of the adults they love. It's one of the reason children who grow up in a home with abuse are far more likely to become either abusers or abuse victims as adults.
Well, this is abuse on a national scale. We're telling children torture is OK. You can tie somebody down and simulate drowning, you can disrespect their religion, treat them as something less than human.
I spent an hour with a couple of vets of the Iraq war today, and their stories were tragic and horrifying. They're both members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. One of them finds talking about it therapeutic and the other finds it just stirs up a hornet's nest of emotions. Both have post-traumatic stress disorder, They talk about the horrible things they witnessed -- and participted in while in Iraq and the emotions rise in them. A person who has never been to war but watches and believes Fox News told me he thought they were whining. I told him he should go do a couple tours there and come back.
Like any other war, we have mean names for the enemy to make them seem a little less human. It's easier to torture and kill somebofy who isn'tquite human.
So,if you believe torture is merely enhanced or harsh interrogation techniques are fine, think about whether you would want them performed on your child
Call it what it is. It is torture, and it is not OK.