An honest attempt by a reader:
It seems to me that the right word for waterboarding, etc., is “brutality,” or “brutal treatment.” That avoids the clinical cleanness of “enhanced interrogation”; and even “coercive interrogation” [which is better] is lame. But “torture” should be reserved for doing real damage to the victim.
As I said, an honest attempt – better than snorts and other snarkisms.
I must admit, I sort of checked out of this debate, years ago, when a terror detainee complained that an American female interrogator had brushed her breasts against him. This is American torture? It was very hard to listen to this stuff when I was knee-deep, or neck-deep, in testimony from Chinese, Cuban, and Middle Eastern prison cells. As my new hero Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali says, “Come on, man.” (See yesterday’s Impromptus.)