A profile in cowardice

The Australian Newspaper regularly runs pieces criticizing political correctness and equivocations in language. So why then do they continue to do it themselves:

US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison within a year and banned the use of torture in terror interrogations in a dramatic repudiation of his predecessor George W. Bush.

Mr Obama signed executive orders on the controversial camp, requiring US investigators to stop short of abusive methods - which critics equate to torture - and requiring a review of the case of the only “enemy combatant” on US soil, Qatari national Ali al-Marri.

Except its not critics, as the former Bush Administration itself recognised it had been using torture:

in an explosive interview with the Washington Post, Susan Crawford, one of the key administration officials responsible for dealing with the detainees, single-handedly demolishes this argument.
Susan Crawford, a retired judge who's been the convening authority for the Guantanamo military commissions for the last two years, says the treatment was abusive and uncalled for.
"We tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani," she tells reporter Bob Woodward. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture."

That treatment included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold.A military report has previously revealed Qahtani was forced to wear a woman's bra and had women's underwear placed on his head during the course of his interrogation, which took place over 50 days from late 2002 to early 2003.

The treatment of the man who was allegedly planning to take part in the September 11 terrorist attacks was so intense that he was twice hospitalised in a life-threatening condition.

Qahtani was far far from the only one subjected to such measures, and whilst this one recieved hospital care, many others died at the hands of the US administration.

Not as well the use of the word "equate" to torture". Not called torture, as a definite allegation, but a limp wristed suggestion that it was something like torture.

The Australian Newspaper is not alone in failing to recognize that the Bush Administration authorized the practice of torture. The New York Times, and Washington Post have been notably wayward.

But Obama hasn't been, it's why he is moving to close Guantanamo, and something journalists and especially their editors need to recognize if they are to truthfully cover this new era. The long national crouch "we dont torture (pls dont look at the photos/mass evidence)" is over.