Waterboarding is torture, but not when the U.S. does it

Rob Beschizza 2:21 pm Wed Mar 9, 2011

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One of the funny things about the New York Times' avoidance of the word "torture" is that everyone knew it eventually slip up or give up. It finally did so in a discussion of waterboarding. Glenn Greenwald:

So according to The New York Times, it's journalistically improper to call waterboarding "torture" — when done by the United States, but when Nazi Germany (or China) does exactly the same thing, then it may be called "torture" repeatedly and without qualification. An organization which behaves this way may be called many things; "journalist" isn't one of them.

Presumably the NYT prefers to give up on the logic behind its euphemisms rather than follow it to places like Nazi Germany, where phrases like "enhanced interrogation techniques" would stop being a joke and become offensively stupid.

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