One can write plain English without sensationalism. Waterboarding someone 183 times is obviously torture. People only use roundabout phrases to describe torture

One can write plain English without sensationalism. Waterboarding someone 183 times is obviously torture. People only use roundabout phrases to describe torture when it's their side that did it. Conversely, it's easy to see the nature of these bureaucratic euphemisms when others use them: http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/ http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versc... Tangential edit: every time I hear "enhanced interrogation techniques" I remember Orwell's classic essay: If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase [...] into the dustbin, where it belongs. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm