'Where language is corrupted...'

Waterboarding is not now and never has been, under any legal, moral or historical authority, an interrogation technique. No one can be "interrogated" with a cloth across their face and water poured over them to bring them to the point of drowning 183 times. They can merely be tortured, and then their broken psyche can be questioned.

That the NYT, that Isaacson and Tanenhaus, two decent and intelligent and humane people, should now be forced by style manuals to say that torture is something else, suggests how far we've come. And how fast.

-- Andrew Sullivan