Bush, Gonzales, feels like Orwell, Kafka

Richard Cohen writes for FortWayne.com
In George Orwell's novel 1984 it was rats, as I recall, that were used to torture Winston Smith. It was not that the rats could do real physical damage, rather it was that Smith was phobic about them, his greatest fear, his worst nightmare, and so he succumbed, denounced his beliefs and even his girlfriend and went back to his pub where he wasted his days drinking gin. This was Orwell's future, our present.

Orwell, however, was only off by 20 years. With immense satisfaction, he would have noted the constant abuse of language by the Bush administration calling suicidal terrorists cowards, naming a constriction of civil liberties the Patriot Act and, of course, wringing all meaning from the word torture. Until just recently when the interpretation of torture was amended, it applied only to the pain like that of organ failure, impairment of body function or even death. Anything less, such as, say, shackling to a low chair for hours and hours so that one prisoner pulled out tufts of hair, is something else. We have no word for it, but it is,or was until recently, considered perfectly legal. Link to this article