This highlights, though, how the mainstream press like the NYT merely made a choice; nothing compelled it, neither then nor now. Then it wasn’t cool to call it torture because, you know, our people were panicking because of 9/11 (thereby buying into the fatuous argument that governing-class panic justifies criminality). And while the long-known underlying facts never changed, fashions and tastes have, apparently. Presto! We now elect to call it torture. Particularly galling in this lack of moral courage is that the NYT et al rarely have a problem describing (accurately) OTHER countries’ execrable treatment of people as torture. But when it comes to their own government, they all turn into lawyers, using hyper legalisms that do nothing but abet the wrongdoing. (What would be fun, in fact, is a civil suit that included the NYT on a conspiracy claim. Potentially interesting discovery in terms of the NYT’s communications with the White House and the national security apparatus.)

This is how the UN Convention Against Torture treaty defines torture, for sake of comparison:

“Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

The only question left is whether the New York Times will label as torture the use of coercion and infliction of pain and/or physical or mental suffering by way of techniques used in the Army Field Manual, and particularly though not exclusively in its Appendix M.

While I may be in a very small minority, discussion of these issues without pointing out that the primary instructions for interrogation, authorized by presidential executive order, no less, involve instructions for use of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading techniques, appears to me to be worse than useless. Talking about torture without pointing out its contemporary use is harmful to current torture victims, as it presents a false narrative that torture was a problem in the past and the only remaining issue is accountability, or keeping it from being used again.

We don’t have to worry about torture being used again. It’s the current and ongoing policy of the U.S. Government NOW, which, of course does not use the word “torture” to describe it.

Finally calling waterboarding torture is a small success, I suppose, but nothing compared to failing to call out use of isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, inculcation of fear and helplessness, manipulation of diet, threats to transfer to countries that torture, and involuntary use of drugs — all currently allowed use in America’s main interrogation manual — as torture.

The failure to call out actual contemporary torture is endemic to our current politicians and press. Such a failure is a huge moral failing, and the consequences of this failure have yet to be determined.

Dean Baquet still has not come out of the closet. He continues to hind behind euphemisms. Baquet says that the “situation” ten years ago was “murky”. “Torture” had a “specialized legal meaning”. Torture was “a label still in dispute”, especially since the US Department of Justice insisted that whatever its government was doing or having done, it couldn’t possibly be torture. The parsing is worthy of Bill Keller.

Baquet claims that the “debate” has now shifted away from whether particular acts were illegal, to whether they “worked”, a conveniently undefined concept still shielded by a de facto American official secrets act and its associated D notices, prohibiting press coverage of banned topics. That shift, taken together with the DoJ’s insistence that whatever the label, it will not prosecute torture committed by or for the US Government, now allows his publication to use the word torture in its “common meaning”.

The “debate” was never about whether violently abusive acts committed by or for the US Government worked. That’s a focus the government chose and the press gave it, as if it were a grant of legal permission. It’s not, despite the government’s hopin’, wishin’ and prayin’. Those acts, if torture, are crimes. They should be prosecuted.

No, the issue was always about finding a means to absolve those who committed torture, and those who demanded, sponsored and authorized it while denying doing so, from legal, political and moral liability for their conduct. Mr. Obama, a supine Congress and a cooperative judiciary have found a way to do that. Consent having been manufactured, it’s now safe for Mr. Baquet to recognize torture when his reporters see it.