Because this is a video game site and supposed to be friendly and relaxing (insert Edna Krabapple-esque jaded laugh), I usually avoid talking politics. I don't hide the fact that I'm a staunch liberal (why should I, when I'm proud of it?), but I generally just avoid the topic altogether.

However, with all this recent to-do about what is and isn't torture, I have a very humble suggestion that should straighten it all out. At issue is whether nonlethal interrogation techniques like keeping someone awake for days at a time, stripping them naked and subjecting them to cold temperatures and water dousings, or making them feel as if they are drowning (so-called "waterboarding") should be considered "torture."

According to Dictionary.reference.com, the word torture includes the following: extreme anguish of body or mind; agony. I would suggest that the feeling that one is drowning, losing one's life, would cause extreme anguish of the mind, at the very least. If subjecting someone to such a process doesn't make one a torturer, it seems it at least satisfies another definition: terrorist. I know that if I was strapped down and made to feel as if I were drowning, I would be terrified.

In a conveniently nebulous "war on terror," should we be employing the same tactics the terrorists do? Should we find the most insanely fanatical extremists and match their inhumanity, or should we hold ourselves to a higher standard? If through "winning" the war on terror we become the same as our enemies, have we truly won?

President Bush has unflappable faith, though, that these interrogation methods are not torture. His reasoning seems to be based on the rather simple argument that his administration does not torture, therefore nothing they do can be considered such. Waterboarding can't be torture (despite it being previously prosecuted as a war crime by the US), since the US practices it. Mr. Bush's candidate for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, has refused to say whether waterboarding constitutes torture in his opinion. Many Democrats and some Republicans in the House and Senate, however, feel that these techniques are torture, even if they don't leave marks.

To resolve this apparent impasse in Washington, I have a simple suggestion for Mr. Bush: to prove that these techniques of interrogation aren't torture, he should voluntarily undergo them himself. If he can be kept standing in one place for over 40 hours, naked, bound, and doused in cold water in a freezing cell, then be forced to feel as if he is drowning--if he can do all this and keep a smile on his face, I know I'd be a lot more willing to believe his take on the subject.

Mr. Bush has it within his power to end all this debate and show us all just how harmless and dare I say... invigorating these techniques are. If Bush, of all people, was able to easily undergo these interrogation techniques and afterwards assert that they are not torture, his words would carry a lot more weight. Perhaps this way, too, we'd get some straight answers on the illegal wiretapping operation he's been running.