James,

Allow me to quote your post to show you a weakness - you wrote:

"As you can read from my post, I think Islamic fundamentalists in general, and Jihadis in particular, are immoral nutjobs and deserve to be punished to the full extent of our law for any and all breeches of the peace. If they commit terrorist acts, they must pay."

Takeaways:

• IFs and Js are not subject to "our law". They are not US citizens, were not taken captive on US soil, do not reside on US soil, and have no right to inclusion under the umbrella of the US Constitution.

• They are infact, enemies of the US with no documentation of association with any orgazization (Al Queda does not issue id or membership cards) - therefore deemed terrorists.

• Congress gave POTUS the power to declare war on them long after they declared war on us and the military is to seek out, destroy, conquer, and erradicate this acknowledged threat

They are not criminals, they are enemies whose acknowledged goal is to kill the infidel to make way for the Islamist Kingdom.

I am surprized you do not know this.

Your point seems to me a deliberate exercise in obfuscation. If I go upstairs and shoot my family, it is murder, pure and simple. The only questions would be, does he know what he is doing at the time he did it and that it was wrong to do it. If I tied up my son in stress positions and kept him awake for hours on end, I'd be torturing him. Anyone with the weakest moral compass has to know this. These actions would not be open to semantic slight-of-hand. Neither should be the actions of sober and intelligent US officials who do these things to helpless captives. If you can just throw up your hands and say about these actions, you say potayto and I say potaaato, then I fear you have no moral center at all.

I know NPR is funded both privately and publicly. But it seems to me that the government funding that there is is enough to warp some of the NPR staff.

What are you talking about? The controversy isn't about whether slapping a prisoner in the face or shoving him against a wall should be described as torture by NPR. It's about waterboarding, a practice that's classified as torture by international law and by the US.

Unfortunately we as a nation are stuck with the cleanup after the debacle of the Bush Administration.

That includes dealing with the reality of the real violation of US Federal Anti-Torture Laws. SEE http://tinyurl.com/besdd3

The only way we will be able to Stop Torture is

to Prosecute Our Torturers.

Keep the pressure on Obama, Holder and the Congressional Democrats to honor their oath to protect our Constitution and enforce our Rule of Law.

SIGN THE PETITION

calling for Prosecution

at ANGRYVOTERS.ORG

Over 250,000 have signed

Join them and call yourself a patriot

.

(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control...

18 USC 2340 Definitions

Same goes for the U.S. Constitution:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Eighth Amendment, Bill of Rights

Most first graders, corporate media and the Obama adminnistration understand this. It's plainly willful nonfeasance.

Excuse my lack of legal knowledge:

Does ratification or confirmation of an international convention make that convention US law?

Or is it simply our hearty amen to the concept (leaving wiggle room to do as we please)

Educate me.

...this one is not hard to figure out:

The reason this NPR person will not use the word "torture" is because the word "torture" taints George Bush's legacy.

While Glenn & me & you & millions of other Americans have come to conclude Bush & Cheney were little more than criminal mischief-makers who left Obama a country in smoldering ruins, meanwhile, large swaths of the traditional media still revere, respect & even worship Bush & Cheney.

You see that when every TV media outlet frames Cheney as a serious, intellectual statesman, even as they constanly invite Cheney on their shows, & prop up Cheney's insane ass as a viable anecdote to Obamaism.

Don't over think this one.

NPR & the majority of traditional media outlets still adore Bush & Cheney. And if Bush & Cheney doesn't want to use the word "torture", then, by God, they are not going to use the word "torture."

The thing that Mr. Greenwald seems to over look is that words have no meaning beyond definition.

To say the U.S. tortured, is torturing, or will torture in the future immedeatly begs the question what is torture.

Certainly, a wide number of people will call waterboarding torture. So to will they call stress positions, and even solitary confinment and limitations on meals.

Eventually you start to realize that you can define torture very broadly or very narrowly, and in areas where there are debate it is just good journalism (something that I understand is a foreign concept to Mr. Greenwald)not to use intentionally inflamitory words to describe what is being discussed.

In the same way that abortion isn't described as killing a fetus, it is inappropriate to describe the wide range of techniques that fall under enhanced interogation as torture, because it immedeatly sets up the debate in a place of one sidedness.

Now, you can call waterboarding torture, that issue is not strongly debated, but to call the entire program a "torture program" is to set up the conversation from a predetermined perspective that makes an actual discussion about the program impossible.

Newspeak goes both ways, as wrong as it is to soften the blow of words to make them more palitable, it is equally wrong (in the fasion of the "Death Tax") to use a hyperbolic term to make a subject far more uncomfortable, provided your purpose is actual debate.

Since Mr. Greenwald's opinion was decided long before any facts were ever presented, he is free to call anything he wishes anything he wishes, but that is because he is a bloger, not a journalist. Understanding the differnce is to understand why real journalists worry about the infulence of bloggers on our national dialogue.