"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description.
I disagree. 'Enhanced' certainly refers to intensification or increase, but also has strongly positive associations. If you experienced two injuries in a row you wouldn't normally say that the second one had 'enhanced your pain experience' - if you did people would assume you were a masochist of some sort. The measure of interrogation is surely in the quality of results it yields; if some technique actually results in a decrease in the quality of intelligence then I'd say it's a degraded interrogation technique.
To the extent that you want a neutral description of an action whose efficacy is unknown, you could say 'aggressive interrogation technique' or 'intensified interrogation technique' or any number of other words. Just because 'enhanced' can be read to mean intensified or increased without necessarily being better does mean it is commonly understood to mean that; when you're choosing terms to describe something to the public - and especially when you're choosing words for their referential rather than explanatory power - that lowest common denominator of meaning is the one that matters.
I appreciate the fine legal distinction that you're drawing here in the context of war crimes and so forth, but I suggest to you that phrases like 'enhanced interrogation technique' are actually part of the problem - deliberate euphemisms chosen primarily for their anodyne qualities.
I disagree. 'Enhanced' certainly refers to intensification or increase, but also has strongly positive associations. If you experienced two injuries in a row you wouldn't normally say that the second one had 'enhanced your pain experience' - if you did people would assume you were a masochist of some sort. The measure of interrogation is surely in the quality of results it yields; if some technique actually results in a decrease in the quality of intelligence then I'd say it's a degraded interrogation technique.
To the extent that you want a neutral description of an action whose efficacy is unknown, you could say 'aggressive interrogation technique' or 'intensified interrogation technique' or any number of other words. Just because 'enhanced' can be read to mean intensified or increased without necessarily being better does mean it is commonly understood to mean that; when you're choosing terms to describe something to the public - and especially when you're choosing words for their referential rather than explanatory power - that lowest common denominator of meaning is the one that matters.
I appreciate the fine legal distinction that you're drawing here in the context of war crimes and so forth, but I suggest to you that phrases like 'enhanced interrogation technique' are actually part of the problem - deliberate euphemisms chosen primarily for their anodyne qualities.