Instead of making an argument that this comparison is not valid, let me go along with you for a moment and agree that torture was performed in all the cases that you have written about.

Is this a “reductio ad absurdum” argument?

What is the purpose of all your articles on the same subject? Is it to show to your readers that torture should not be used by CIA and FBI?

But there is no need for that because on January 22, 2009 President Obama issued an Executive Order that bans torture by requiring that the Army field manual be used as the guide for terrorist interrogations.

You criticize NYT:

“Virtually every tactic which the article describes the Iranians as using has been used by the U.S. during the War on Terror, while several tactics authorized by Bush officials (waterboarding, placing detainees in coffin-like boxes, hypothermia) aren't among those the article claims are used by the Iranians. Nonetheless, "torture" appears to be a perfectly fine term for The New York Times to use to describe what the Iranians do, but one that is explicitly banned to describe what the U.S. did..”

What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to put George Bush, Dick Cheney and a few more people against the wall and shoot them? Or do you just want to put them on trial, convict them and sent to prison?

Nope.

Apparently, the argument is that GG has a personal vindictiveness towards Bush and Cheney.

Maybe, you should send to jail many more people because as you put it in your answer to Danny Sleator on this thread, “itt wasn't "the Bush administration" that tortured. It was the United States.” I tend to understand this statement as a figure of speech to show that the people of this country are also responsible for what their government did.

In a democracy, the people are the government – therefore, the people are responsible for what their government does.

Once this point is understood, the next question is as follows: What is it that you suggest we do? You don’t think that the war against the terrorists is over, do you?

What do you suggest our government does to prevent the next strike by the terrorists? What should the CIA and FBI do when the terrorists strike again and some of them are apprehended?

Let’s assume now that all harsh or even brutal interrogation techniques usd by the U.S. government belong to the past.

How is it going to change behaviour of the totalitarian countries such as Iran toward their own peoples? Are they going to stop torturing them? Should we stop calling this torture and use different name for it?

Let’s assume that all the murderers, pedophiles, and thieves in the United States suddenly realized that they could no longer be tortured. What are we to do?

You end your post with this sentence:

“All the impediments that prevent American media organizations from using the word "torture" certainly do evaporate quickly when it comes to other countries.”

Is it your punch line?

Unless the next president cancells the Barack Obama’s executive order regarding torture, it is history.

Um, President Barack Obama’s executive order does not pertain to the “media.” You seem to be under the illusion that we live under a totalitarian state – indeed, you are arguing for one. Get a clue.

So, if you don’t propose any new ideas as to what to do with the terrorists in the future, but, instead, keep saying the same things day after day, your writing might eventually fit the classical definition of insanity.

Yes, insanity. A good example of your definition of insanity is the criminal state of Israel – keep terrorizing the Palestinian population, and expect them to change into peaceful collaborators. Sometimes what appears to be insanity is actually quite rational – in this case, the perpetuation of war, and the perpetuation of the Victim Jew. It is actually quite lucrative on both counts.

I don't think so Mike - 'Insane' are people who have a much more narrow and kind of ugly fixation like Steele the First with his: "the jews - the jews"!! -

Glenn is just a good soul standing on the corner of the street yelling: Repent ye sinner -

And repent they should (I hope you agree) - and we better remind them every day!-

Because we don't want America to morph into the temple of doom!

OK, so nearly 12 years after he was indicted for his alleged part in the African embassy bombings in August 1998, over six years since he was seized after a gunfight in Gujrat, Pakistan in July 2004, and four years after his transfer to Guantánamo — after two years in secret CIA prisons, where, he says, he was "a victim of the cruel ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’" — Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian and one of 14 supposedly "high-value detainees" transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, will face a trial in a federal court in New York. On Thursday, Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan set a date of September 13, 2010 for his trial to begin.

This is ironic for three reasons: firstly, because it means that Ghailani — the first Guantánamo prisoner to make it to the US mainland — will persistently expose the lies of the cowardly, scaremongering politicians who recently whipped up a frenzy about bringing prisoners to the mainland when he fails to escape from prison over the next 14 months; secondly, because it should demonstrate to the Obama administration that federal courts work, whereas Ghailani’s proposed trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo (the Dick Cheney-inspired system that Obama has hinted he wants to revive) came to nothing and would almost certainly have lacked legitimacy had it gone ahead; and thirdly, because it demonstrates that the five years from the date of his capture to his first appearance in a New York courtroom in June — when he pleaded not guilty to the 286 charges against him — was a complete waste of time (if that isn’t too light-hearted a description of the Bush administration’s chronically cruel and obtuse program of "extraordinary rendition" and torture), and the Justice Department is clearly fortunate that, notwithstanding Ghailani’s claims of torture in secret CIA prisons, his case appears to be relatively straightforward to prosecute.

...

If this trail is not simply a show trial, it will knock your socks off. His lawyers want the CIA to preserve its "Black Sites" and to grant them access for purposes of the defense. This could get hot fast.

One of his lawyers, Peter Quijano, said,

"The inspection of the CIA ‘Black Sites’ where the defendant was detained, subjected to interrogation techniques, interrogated and made statements is necessary," because "it appears undeniable that the defendant was subjected to harsh conditions and harsh interrogation techniques while detained in CIA ‘Black Sites’" and "it is believed that the defendant was interrogated and made statements after being subjected to a ‘harsh regime employing a combination of physical and psychological ill-treatment with an aim of obtaining compliance and extracting information.’"

No kidding. He was tortured by the CIA? Who would have imagined such a thing could happen to a fellow in the hands of the Empire?

Will the NYT and NPR suck it up and use the word torture in this case? We wait breathlessly to see.