"The US Does Not Torture"
Torture:
Quote:
Torture is defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture
the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Waterboarding, subjection to freezing temperatures, prolonged periods without food, the (occasional, and not officially promoted) stripping down of detainees. These are a few techniques that have been declared as having been used in getting information from detainees, many times in combination with one another. The entire list of techniques has not been disclosed.
Is it right that the President steadfastly claims, time and time again, that the "U.S. Does not torture," and that, whenever speaking about it publicly, he will never mention the techniques, even though some of them are public information (which the public must read about, themselves), simply referring to it as the "questioning and interrogation" of detainees? Do you see this as misleading the public?
[Edit: This is not really to raise the discussion on whether or not torturing detainees is justified - simply on whether or not telling the public that torture is not being used is ethical.]