Today's New York Times corrections, explained

One of today's corrections says:

A front-page article on Thursday about an announcement by President Bush that 14 high-profile terror suspects had been transferred from secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, incompletely described the interrogation technique of waterboarding, which intelligence officials say was used on one suspect. The technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board with his feet elevated above his head and placing a wet cloth down his throat or over his nose and mouth to create the sensation of drowning.

Thus spelling out the sickening technique that George Bush wants to retain for detainees in the CIA detention program (his repeated refusal to disavow it, most recently in an interview with Matt Lauer, signalling that this is the case). But one point of curiosity is surely what the original article said. Unfortunately the NYT is being trixy in that regard and the article now seamlessly blends in the correction. Of course there is an "alternative set of procedures" (as Bush would say) for finding the original text, and it is as follows:

a technique known as waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to feel as if he is drowning

which made it hard to distinguish from a dunking prank. So two cheers to the NYT for the correction; one cheer deducted for the dead tree version, sitting on tables everywhere, which does not enlighten people as to what is being done in their name.

UPDATE: The NYT still does better than the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which describes the procedure as follows --

Last year ABC news reported that 11 top al Qaeda figures broke only after "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of suffocation and is the most controversial of the known techniques employed. There's a legitimate debate to be had over waterboarding and other tactics. But part of our problem with the McCain Amendment was that Congressmen refused to engage in an honest debate lest they be accused of approving "torture," which no one sanctions but is a word used to slur anyone who wants aggressive interrogation.