What's In A Word, Part II

The NRO asks, in the wake of John McCain's grandstanding, "what is torture":

The root of this confusion is the absence of an agreed-upon definition of terms. Everyone knows that "torture" is illegal, banned under the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT). The U.S. is a signatory to that treaty. The administration maintains that, as a matter of policy, it also applies CAT's other prohibition, against "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" (CID), to its handling of detainees overseas.

So, what is torture? Under CAT and U.S. law, it is the infliction of "severe pain or suffering." Bush critics like to ignore the word "severe" and pretend that subjecting a detainee to any pain is torture. It is not. While most people instinctively know what they consider torture — fingernails pulled out, electric shocks, beatings — defining what rises to the level of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is a trickier question.

That is all the more reason for Congress to define which practices it finds acceptable and which it doesn't. But all the McCain amendment does is apply the CID prohibition to our actions overseas, which the administration — at least by its own lights — is already doing.

Try to find any references to sleep deprivation or MREs.