Don't torture English to soft-pedal abuse

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpnun203809742may20,0,2864221,print.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

'Torture is torture is torture," Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week in an interview on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace.

That depends on what papers you read. The media in France, Italy and Germany have been routinely using the word "torture" in the headings of their stories on the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison. And so have the British papers, not just the left-wing Guardian ("Torture at Abu Ghraib"), but the right-wing Express ("Outrage at U.S. Torture of Prisoners") and Rupert Murdoch's Times ("Inside Baghdad's Torture Jail").

But the American press has been more circumspect, sticking with vaguer terms such as "abuse" and "mistreatment." In that, they may have been taking a cue from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Asked about torture in the prison, he said, "What has been charged so far is abuse, which is different from torture. I'm not going to address the 'torture' word."

Some on the right have depicted the abuses even more mildly than that. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Midge Decter called the treatment of detainees a "nasty hazing." Rush Limbaugh said it was "no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation." On a San Francisco radio station, shock jocks were describing the prison as "Abu Grab-Ass" and talking about the treatment in a ribald way that made it sound like "Animal House III - Bluto Bonks Baghdad."