Cowboy Confessional

Lexicographers must be laughing aloud.

When battlefield bums captured in Afghanistan were dropped on the western shores of Cuba, there were rumors of torture. Back then little specific information was released concerning the treatment of the Guantánamo gang, yet insinuated was that prisoners were being mistreated and that ‘torture’ was being practiced.

This caught my attention because the media tossed the term ‘torture’ about with characteristic abandon. You would think that people who use words to earn their daily grub might take the same care of their tools that an auto mechanic does with his. Sadly modern reporters seem to be one step removed from journalist and two steps from literate.

Back then – in 2002 – I decided to have the definition of ‘torture’ logged firmly in my cranium before opening my mouth. I did not want to be mistaken for a reporter. I checked no fewer than five dictionaries, include several online versions of prominent commercial lexicons. All five had the same central definition of ‘torture’, though the big joke is that some of the online dictionaries have been edited in the last six years to broaden the term.

torture, n. Infliction of severe physical pain or discomfort

The key stanza in that abbreviated tune is “severe physical pain”. Note that no word is wasted. To be torture the recipient must:

a) Experience pain
b) It must be physical pain, not emotional stress or psychological trauma
c) It must be severe as in ‘Please Allah, let me die now’

This presents a problem to the Obama administration and to any reporter sober enough to find a dictionary. Both groups have prattled on with wild-eyed horror about America inflicting torture upon detainees on the beaches of Guantánamo. A Senate Armed Services Committee report listed the enhanced interrogation techniques that the media, partisan politicians and plebiscites alike have called ‘torture.’

Sleep depravation: Severe = no, physical = no, pain = no

Slamming into a flexible wall: Severe = no, physical = yes, pain = maybe

Waterboarding: Severe = maybe, physical = no but scary, pain = no

Hooding and scaring with dogs: Hell, in downtown Oakland hoods are considered a fashion statement and pit bulls are pets

For a book-in-progress I recently interviewed the owners for San Francisco’s Citadel, a BDSM basement for the town’s whip-n-chain hobbyists. Those people know torture. Perhaps our Guantánamo guests should be sent to San Francisco’s SOMO district for R&R&BDSM.

The short and bitter sweet of it is that this list of American actions doesn’t even come close to the proper and enduring definition of torture. We can have a civil debate on if these interrogation techniques should be used, but no sane discussion is possible if people and reporters don’t use simple nouns correctly.

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