The fact of the matter is that there would be no need to define "torture" if we were to either (1) classify the prisoners as POW, and therefore subject to the Geneva Convention, or (2) non POW prisoners in our custody and subject to our laws. The Bush administration has chosen to classify them as none of the above, and to decide what may or may not constitute torture.
The other fact of the matter is that mistreatment of prisoners, whether or not you want to parse words and debate the meaning of "is", has been counterproductive in the so called "war on terror."
Now you're really reaching. When have you ever seen cops hang perps from the ceiling, or beat them senseless? I'll bet you haven't even seen them engage in the milder forms of mistreatment we've been discussing, like waterboarding or subjecting them to hypothermia. If they did, their cases would be thrown out of court.
You might wish for a system in which such actions are considered acceptable. If you do, you might try immigrating to somewhere else, say North Korea, for example.
Go back and read the rest of my post, rather than taking a piece out of contetext, and maybe we can have a rational discussion.
