Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

The word "torture" is full of negative connotations, so when the administration of Bush the Younger approved the torture of detained terrorist suspects beginning in 2002, the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" was adopted instead. You can read more about that here:
Enhanced interrogation techniques

There was some debate during the last decade as to whether elements of the enhanced interrogation program  constituted torture. Christopher Hitchens, a virtuoso essayist and professional angry person for Vanity Fair at the end of his life, grew tired of the theoretical arguments, and decided to see for himself how much suffering waterboarding can really cause. The video of that experiment is here:

I don't intend for this blog to have a political agenda, but I also don't think that this issue merits political baggage. Civilized countries where people aspire, like Google, to not be evil don't subject people to hounding, freezing, sleep deprivation, humiliation, psychological terror, and drowning. That seems simple enough. America should be that civilized, but our leaders voluntarily chose the path to evil themselves when evil was thrust upon us on 9/11. Avoiding the clearly-labelled path to Hell should've been reason enough to shoot down these techniques when they were suggested, and even if that first layer of conscience was penetrated, the impracticality of the operation should've been enough as well. In the end we chose to become more like the horror we saw from Al-Qaeda because we couldn't think of anything better to do.