Even out of office, the departed Bush White House seems to get its way the press. In this case, how newsrooms dutifully shy away from the “t” word because that's what Bushies prefer.

Greg Sargent explains:

But the bottom line is that by not using the term, the paper is rendering a verdict, too - in favor of the Bush administration. There's a reason the Bushies don't call waterboarding torture: It happened on their watch, and calling it torture would be an admission of guilt. Naturally, their official position is that they didn't torture. By not describing the acts committed under Bush as “torture,” the paper is propping up the Bush argument. Period.