Another Newspeak Word that has got to go: "Detainee"

[Steerpike_Denver]

For God's sake, can we PLEASE stop referring to prisoners as "detainees"?! It makes it sound like they've been momentarily inconvenienced, held up in traffic, or pulled out of a security line to clear up some minor discrepancy in their papers or something. "Sorry I was late for the meeting, I was detained." We took these men (mostly) off the streets, or in the confusion of the battlefield, often with no evidence other than the testimony of questionable "witnesses", dragged them halfway around the world, clapped them in cells for years, and tortured them for dubious "intelligence" about organizations and activitues they are often completely ignorant of, hid their presence from humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross, and have refused to release them, even when we later learned they were completely innocent. We did not "detain" them; we captured them; they aren't detainees, they're prisoners. Even the left wing has been using the word "detainee" when discussing this treatment. We need to stop using their terminology, and their framing.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Yup. After 72 hours or the first "enhanced interrogation"....

whichever comes first, that person is no longer a detainee.