A little ironic that you drop in the bit about "lawyering your way around each of the elements," while at the same time encouraging a shift of the language of the discussion from "torture" to "enhanced interrogation." Note, the Time article does not use the word "enhanced" at all.
Call a spade a spade: sensory deprivation, extreme temperatures, stress positions are torture. We don't have to treat potential criminals like our elderly grandparents, but we shouldn't intentionally make their lives more miserable than they need to be.
I'm certainly not the one shifting what "torture" means. In Bangladesh, at least 20 years ago if not still today, teachers would punish students by putting pencils between their fingers and squeezing down hard. In the U.K. in the 60's and 70's, caning schoolchildren was common. That's what people did to kids. 50 years ago, "torture" meant hanging soldiers from meat hooks, beating their already broken limbs, putting them in metal boxes in the sun. It did not simply mean making them miserable.
I'm not saying we can't shift our perceptions of how it's acceptable to treat prisoners. But you have to recognize that there's not much consensus that what happened to Jose Padilla was in fact "torture." That's why I used the phrase "enhanced interrogation"--so we can talk about it without having to agree on where the lines are drawn.
Calling it "enhanced interrogation" is using a euphemism with the intent of hiding what the act actually entails. If you are afraid of using certain words because there is a lack of consensus, then list the activities directly and let people derive the connotations the words carry themselves. Admittedly, you (Yoo?) did list the activities after using the euphemism, but why use the euphemism at all, if not to push the equivalent of the Overton window in a certain direction? Waterboarding, etc., do quite a bit more than make people miserable: I was understating for effect. [1] I understand that this conversation has devolved into the pit that you wanted to avoid, but as others have stated, "enhanced interrogation" sounds like doublespeak of the highest order.
By the way, Wikipedia, for all that it's worth, has come to quite a resounding and comfortable consensus: "Enhanced interrogation techniques is a euphemism for methods used in the U.S. government's program of systematic torture of detainees [...]". Well cited too. [2]
> Calling it "enhanced interrogation" is using a euphemism with the intent of hiding what the act actually entails.
But clearly I had no intent to hide anything since I listed the specific techniques right afterward.
> By the way, Wikipedia, for all that it's worth, has come to quite a resounding and comfortable consensus
The Wikipedia article does not distinguish between the range of techniques that fall under the umbrella of enhanced interrogation. That is relevant because there is no indication Padilla was ever subjected to say waterboarding.
We know he was subjected to sensory deprivation and stress positions. But the European Court of Human Rights has held that those are not torture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation#The_five_se... ("In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) examined the United Nations' definition of torture, and subsequently ruled that the five techniques 'did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture' . . .")
You left out the best part of that quote, which is part of that last sentence: "however they did amount "to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment", which is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, article 3.[17]"
Even if the government didn't "torture" him (using your definitions), it's tarnish on the luster of American exceptionalism to condone this sort of behavior, regardless of it's broader classification. This is to say nothing of the hypocrisy in relying on a 1978 definition of torture, for evaluation of actions taken 30+ years later. By the same token, your "corporal punishment in school" example was legal then, but is no longer legal now. Should we go back to our 1978 laws to decide how we manage our children? If we shouldn't, then we shouldn't allow terrible (and useless [1]) degradation of fellow humans to occur at our behest.
Call a spade a spade: sensory deprivation, extreme temperatures, stress positions are torture. We don't have to treat potential criminals like our elderly grandparents, but we shouldn't intentionally make their lives more miserable than they need to be.