Enhanced Bull

I sometimes inflict torture upon myself as I did Saturday night. In a depressed mood, I decided to watch the CBS - News Journal Republican debate.

The only thing that stuck with me after the debate was over was the discussion on torture. Only Paul and Huntsman were quite clear that interrogation techniques such as " water boarding " ARE TORTURE. The others appeared to be more comfortable with something called "enhanced interrogation techniques", suggesting that the latter are not torture.

Torture is defined as the act of inflicting excruciating pain. Enhance means to intensify something or raise it to a higher degree. It appears that if an individual is subjected to interrogation where techniques are used to get him to reveal information or confess to a crime, he is being tortured only if he suffers excruciating pain. If he toughs it out and spits in the face of his torturers - sorry, interrogators, then he is only experiencing enhanced interrogation. The catch is that enhanced interrogation can be enhanced to a point where it inflicts excruciating pain. At that point the poor SOB is being tortured.

The point of all this is not to inflict pain on the reader. If it is confusing so are the attempts to justify torture as an acceptable form of interrogation . Our presidential hopefuls should call a spade for a spade. Water boarding is torture, period. A President that excuses forms of torture by calling them "enhanced interrogation" is nothing but a Philadelphia lawyer and is bound to inflict excruciating pain on the country.

I'm not sure that I will watch another Republican presidential debate. The crap coming from their mouths is intensifying to the point that listening to their bull is pure torture.