Amid the barrage of readers' questions surrounding the New York
Times' reporting on the newly released Guantanamo Bay documents
from WikiLeaks, Bill Keller once more took on the question of
the Times' use (or rather, avoidance) of the word "torture" to
describe U.S. interrogation techniques, calling its use
"polemical":  Q. The article today says the documents "are
largely silent about the use of the harsh interrogation tactics
at Guantánamo." Why does The New York Times continue to refuse
to call torture by its name?  — Aaron Dome, Chicago  A. Some of
the interrogation methods may fit a legal or common-sense
definition of torture. Others may not. To refer to the whole
range of practices as "torture" would be simply polemical.  —
Bill Keller  Keller took a few lumps last summer when he
defended the paper's decision, illuminated in a Harvard study,
not to use the word in reference to waterboarding. The Times
executive editor won no friends when he dismissed the study as
"somewhat misleading and tendentious." A