Enhanced Interrogation is Still Torture
Published: January 15, 2026 •
2 min read
“Enhanced interrogation” is what happens when politicians try to make torture sound like a software update.
The phrase became widely used during the War on Terror after the U.S. government started secretly interrogating terrorism suspects in black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Instead of calling the methods what they obviously were—torture—officials rolled out a slick, bureaucratic phrase: “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It sounds clean. Professional. Almost scientific. That’s the point.
Because the actual techniques were anything but clean.
We’re talking about waterboarding (basically simulated drowning), keeping people awake for days, forcing them into painful stress positions, locking them in tiny boxes, and blasting them with extreme temperatures. If you described that happening in another country, nobody would hesitate to call it torture. But slap a government label on it and suddenly it’s a “technique.”
The phrase wasn’t just PR spin—it was legal camouflage. If you avoid the word torture, you can argue you aren’t breaking anti-torture laws. Critics called this what it was: word games designed to make something brutal sound acceptable.
One of the biggest champions of the program was Dick Cheney, who served as Vice President under George W. Bush. Cheney repeatedly defended the tactics in interviews, arguing they helped stop terrorist attacks and kept Americans safe. He wasn’t shy about it either—he publicly supported the methods long after they became controversial.
But critics, human rights groups, and even some former officials weren’t buying it. They argued the government wasn’t discovering a clever new interrogation strategy. It was just repackaging torture with nicer words.
Because here’s the reality: if you have to rename something to make it sound less awful, it’s probably awful. Waterboarding doesn’t become humane because someone in Washington calls it “enhanced.” It’s still a guy being strapped down and made to feel like he’s drowning.
You can polish the language all you want. Torture is still torture.
