MM&N Commentary George Bush is the torture president. He is so by rejecting the simple meaning of words used in long-standing law and by embracing the infinite mutability of reality to proclaim any action as legal or ethical. We see this in Bush's desire to define the Geneva Convention, not to clarify ambiguities, but to establish a legal framework for systematically violating laws against humanity. Thus, under Common Article Three, one cannot engage in torture, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity such as humiliating and degrading treatment. But, in Bush's world, waterboarding and the application of electrical appliances to parts of the body aren't humiliating under the convention if there is sufficient military justification. It's a paradox that a man who claims that his faith is based on absolutes has a utilitarian philosophy more akin to relativistic post-modernism. George Bush is a defector from the reality-based community where evidence, facts, logic, reality, and decency have meaning. I am truly embarrassed that this man is our president.