Apparently we regressed to junior high at the turn of the millennium. According to an official Bush-era memo, to be torture "an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering." You know you are skating on thin ice when you are trying to find the loop holes by making sure everyone knows how to define words that everyone knows. I would think everyone knows what torture is, but then Clinton would ask what "is" is.
Look, you're not only grown ups, you are leaders of the free world, but you're using a rubber-and-glue mentality. What's more I have to cringe a little as I write "leaders of the free world" in the same post as how this group allowed torture just by redefining it.
Right is right and wrong is wrong: it doesn't matter how it's defined. Trying to cause emotional distress on a prisioner with entomophobia, leaving people naked and in diapers, administering simulated drowning, or enacting minor physical violence are not the actions of leaders of a free world. (However, throwing a shoe gets you a year of prison time.)
I guess it's easier to hurt people than take real steps toward security. It's no wonder Bush placed among the lowest 8 presidents in a recent survey of historians. Easy solutions to complex problems are rarely the right solutions.
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