Frank Luntz: How to End Torture In Five Words or Less

Waterboarding: It’s a word that just won’t go away. The present administration can’t explain it away, dismiss it or hide it forever in some black op prison in Eastern Europe.

So they did the next best thing and called in their top pollster and wordsmith, Frank Luntz.

Luntz is at the top of his game and has grown in stature over the years for having successfully transformed “oil drilling” into “energy exploration”, the “estate tax" into the “death tax,” and “logging” into the “healthy forests initiative.”

Pure genius. His euphemisms have truly changed the world.

Now he’s looking to change Americans’ view of torture by changing a few words here and adding a few words there.

His first challenge - “waterboarding.”

How does an expert transform a word that even the densest among us can’t mistake for anything but good, old-fashioned torture?

For Frank, it’s a piece of cake. Just check out his list of euphemisms below for “waterboarding.”

1. Extreme Beer Bonging
2. The Thirstquencher
3. Hydrate or Die
4. Reverse High Colonic
5. Gonzo Gardening (a tribute to the man who legalized torture, Alberto Gonzalez)
6. Aqua-Manning
7. Ninth Warding
8. The Big Gulp
9. The Gitmo Guzzle
10. This drink’s on the White House

We Americans don’t believe in torture. And fortunately, if we all just simply start using one of the euphemisms above, torture will cease to exist.

And we will have Frank to thank, once “extreme beer bonging” is accepted here and abroad as just another harmless, enhanced interrogation technique.