Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> Why do they insist on saying 'enhanced interrogation technique' instead of torture?

"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description. "Torture" is a conclusion of law applied to the facts that, while there is overwhelming reason to accept that the conclusion is valid for the program as a whole, and many of the specific instances in particular, does not necessarily apply to all of everything that is under the label "enhanced interrogation techniques", and is, in any case, not a legal conclusion that the Committee reached (though the Chair of the Committee, Senator Feinstein, in her introduction to the release, emphatically and directly states as her personal conclusion both that the program involved "torture", and that it involved "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment (both terms being significant in regard to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (including Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which applies to conflict that is not between states-parties to the convention) [0] and the manner in which grave breaches of the Conventions are incorporation into US criminal law as war crimes under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2441 [1].)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Grave_breach...

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

I disagree. 'Enhanced' certainly refers to intensification or increase, but also has strongly positive associations. If you experienced two injuries in a row you wouldn't normally say that the second one had 'enhanced your pain experience' - if you did people would assume you were a masochist of some sort. The measure of interrogation is surely in the quality of results it yields; if some technique actually results in a decrease in the quality of intelligence then I'd say it's a degraded interrogation technique.

To the extent that you want a neutral description of an action whose efficacy is unknown, you could say 'aggressive interrogation technique' or 'intensified interrogation technique' or any number of other words. Just because 'enhanced' can be read to mean intensified or increased without necessarily being better does mean it is commonly understood to mean that; when you're choosing terms to describe something to the public - and especially when you're choosing words for their referential rather than explanatory power - that lowest common denominator of meaning is the one that matters.

I appreciate the fine legal distinction that you're drawing here in the context of war crimes and so forth, but I suggest to you that phrases like 'enhanced interrogation technique' are actually part of the problem - deliberate euphemisms chosen primarily for their anodyne qualities.

> "Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

Such language exists only to obscure the meaning. How exactly do you distinguish an "enhanced" interrogation technique from merely an interrogation technique? Is there any better criterion than saying that an interrogation technique is "enchanced" if it involves torture?

Orwell has a nice essay about this: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

UPDATED: I can't reference Orwell and start sentences with "In my opinion..." :)

"Torture" isn't just a crime it's also a word that's been around for centuries that is used to describe the kind of things described in the report. People who want to avoid it do so because its a powerful and emotive word. Describing it as "enhanced interrogation techniques" is just a euphemism to make it seem more palatable because everyone agrees "torture" is wrong but who even knows what an "enhanced interrogation technique" is?

‘Enhanced’ is factual here? How about ‘Damaging interrogation technique’? That’s certainly more factual than ‘enhanced’.

> ‘Enhanced’ is factual here?

Yes, in terms of intensity.

> How about ‘Damaging interrogation technique’?

That's more conclusory than descriptive of the technique, though certainly the whole report (well, the whole several-hundred-page "executive summary") makes that point.

I don't think there is any advantage to adding the emotional weighting associated with the conclusion that the report leads to into the language describing the individual facts. Its more comfortable, perhaps, to people who didn't need the facts to come to the conclusion that the report demands, but I don't see that as an important feature.

> uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

Are you so obsessed with minutiae of definitions that you are unable to see that both terms describe reprehensible acts performed by people against other people?

The parent is right to be skeptical considering the number of lawyers involved in this mess. Torture is obviously illegal so it has more implications than just "enhanced interrogation".

Right to be skeptical of what, precisely?

Are we noticing the irony of using the term "uncontroversial" to answer controversy?

Sure, "comparatively less emotionally loaded way of distinguishing from other interrogation techniques that also does not carry the weight of appearing to be conclusory on a matter of law on which the Committee was very clearly not intending to state a conclusion" would probably be better than "uncontroversial".

But the point is that people disagree that the emotionally-loaded word should not be used. That's the whole controversy.

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