Water Torture, Not Water Boarding

I want to thank Devilstower (Mark Sumner) from DailyKos, for pointing something out to me today.

In 2004 the CIA first used the term "water boarding" as a joke on surf boarding. Before that it was called simply "water torture. "

And it is true, not sure about the joke on surf boarding, but the timing is accurate. Wikipedia has a somewhat extensive description of the etymology of the term "water boarding."

While the techniques involved in waterboarding have been used for centuries, the use of the phrase "waterboarding" to describe such techniques is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The first use of the term "water boarding" in the media was in a New York Times article of May 13, 2004:

In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as 'water boarding', in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.

The American attorney Alan Dershowitz is reported to have been responsible, two days later, for shortening the term to a single word – "waterboarding" – in a Boston Globe article where he stated: "After all, the administration did approve rough interrogation methods for some high valued detainees. These included waterboarding...

So, I have an idea. From now on, we refer to this technique as what it is, "Water Torture." This is not to make it sound worse, rather, we should make it sound exactly as bad as it is. Next time you hear someone use the term "water boarding," please be sure to to enlighten them.