More watering down of the word torture

In a BBC report, a man being held at Guantanamo is claiming to being tortured. Of course just using this word in the media conjures up pictures in people's minds where they heard of real torture occurring: bamboo shoots under the finger nails, beating with a rubber hose, creative cutting with a knife, etc. Well, as we look a little deeper we see that the man is claiming that being force-fed constitutes torture. He wanted to go on a hunger strike, and the guards aren't letting him:

Through his lawyer, Mr Odah described his treatment during his hunger strike.

"First they took my comfort items away from me. You know, my blanket, my towel, my long pants, then my shoes. I was put in isolation for 10 days.

"They came in and read out an order. It said if you refuse to eat, we will put you on the chair [for force feeding]."

He told how detainees were given "formulas" to force them to empty their bowels and were strapped to a metal chair three times a day, where a tube was inserted to administer food.

Through his lawyer. That just about explains it all. Well, just about. Another entity has thrown in their two cents:

The UN Human Rights Commission said recently that it regarded force-feeding at Guantanamo as a form of torture

Ah, yes. Our old friends at the United Nations, and more specifically, the infamous human rights commission led recently by Sudan. Well, perhaps we should no longer engage in the "torturous" practice of force-feeding detainees since the United Nations says its bad. When the detainee then dies of hunger we can ship the body to the human rights commission for them to dispose of.

What we see here is that there is a continuous movement in the media to blur the meaning of words so that they can use them to push an agenda. While the media did not initiate the word "torture", they passed it faithfully along in a news story with a straight face when it was only worthy of ridicule. We yet again see that the media has very little regard for the truth. In their never-ending quest to push Bush's job approval ratings down, they simply cannot comprehend the damage they are inflicting on their own credibility and in the end, their existence.