Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the war on terror is the fact that the United States has admitted that it uses waterboarding as an interrogation technique. While all the experts agree that the practice is indeed torture, it hasn’t prevented conservative mouthpieces from declaring that “throwing a little water” on someone’s face is a justifiable practice to prevent terrorism. You may recall that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded a total of about 180 times. Well, conservative talk show Mancow decided to try out waterboarding to see if it was indeed torture. The average person lasts about 14 seconds. Mancow lasted only half of that.
I’ll give him props for going through with this. It’s something very few conservatives who support waterboarding are unwilling to do. Mancow had to admit that the technique really is torture; you body thinks its drowning, and naturally starts to panic and suffocate. This is precisely why it’s so damn horrible. No society that praises themselves for their observance to the spirit of the law can condone such actions. America was not founded on tyrannical principles, and this waterboarding travesty is a legacy of shame that will carry on for many generations. Now all we need to do is try it one more time with Dick Cheny and see how he feels about it.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
What’s bullshit is that torture has become such a partisan issue, it’s nice to see some conservatives give this a try and put their money where their mouth is.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
This whole setup seemed a lot friendlier than when Hitchens did the same thing for a vanity fair piece (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58).
Mancow didn’t even have his hands restrained.
What really amazed me is how Mancow, if the thing about drowning as a child is true, could think waterboarding was like having a bath.
I drowned myself when I was 5, and I can’t imagine a more fucked up experience.
May 24th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Not to be totally heartless, but watch the video of these terrorists beheading someone and then re-watch this. I don’t think we’re anywhere near as horrible as they are. But I still can’t get fully behind the bandwagon that we shouldn’t do this if we can save lives.
May 25th, 2009 at 6:34 am
So, that’s our goal?
To be slightly less bad than the motherfucking Taliban guys?
Not to mention the fact that torture leads to bad intelligence.
People who don’t know shit will eventually just admit to whatever the person asking the questions want them to admit, regardless of how true it is.
May 25th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Roxanne.. your argument FOR waterboarding stems from what seems like an argument for retribution/punishment. Not to be heartless, but how horrible they may have been to the handfull of americal soldiers they manage to get thier hands on is irrelavant. The purpose of wateboarding is not to punish but to gather information.
Is torture an effective way to gather information? No absolutely not. There is no evidence that torture in any way provides vaguely truthful information.
So now you’re left with the most powerful country in the world with the most advanced global information networks, most technologically advanced information gathering tools reduced to inhumanely and illegally torturing it’s prisoners of war for.. effectively… nothing.