tor-ture: Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
One of the top links on cnn.com is 'Bush: "We do not torture"'. Above that is, "Five U.S. soldiers charged with detainee abuse". At first glance, my impression was that Bush denies that the government uses torture at the same time he is attempting to protect the CIA's ability to torture (see news sources about the actual bill). I assume that what he MEANS is that the definition of "torture" used in Congress' bill is too broad. I kind of think so, too. I don't want to look it up again right now, but I'm pretty sure it mentions "unfair treatment" in addition to physical and mental harm/anguish. Unfair treatment could include detaining someone at all (I am against indefinite detaining w/o trial or reprsnt'n), it could mean denying them television sets or exercise equipment. But I completely agree that TORTURE should not be used. TORTURE is the act of physical or mental abuse in order to gain information or just sick satisfaction. When Bush says we will "aggressively pursue" America's enemies "under the law" he is definitely not clear about what law America pursues enemies under. That would be the Geneva Convention, and other such agreements that stipulate fair practices of war and aggression. Under these agreements, we are NOT allowed to use torture, we are NOT allowed to indefinitely detain people without trials or reprsnt'n, whether or not they are being held on foreign soil. The foreign soil bit is just to deny those detained the rights anyone else on American soil has. Bring 'em into the States and you HAVE to give them a trial, because this is America! Guantanamo, that's not America, it's just a Naval Base full of American soldiers torturing/detaining America's enemies. (We can't even call them war criminals or prisoners of war because we aren't at war. At the end of "Mission: Iraqi Freedom" we aren't sending those guys home. Right now, those people don't exist. They were plucked out of their countries and put into limbo.)