By Any Other Name

It's hard to describe just how badly the New York Times has failed our nation during the past eight years. Not to put too fine a point on it, but today, even after the release of Justice Department memos recounting, in excruciating detail, interrogation techniques okayed by the most senior members of the Bush Administration, the Times still refuses to use the word "torture" to describe those techniques. In the headline, torture is reduced to "harsh tactics." The article does slightly better, describing those techniques as "brutal."

The U.S. government has, in the past, prosecuted and convicted soldiers who engaged in waterboarding for torture. That technique has been understood to be torture for centuries. Why does the Times so carefully refuse to use that word in its reporting on the subject? The high level approval of torture will go down as one of the most ugly episodes in our nation's history and yet the nation's paper of record continues to euphimize it.