Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

[Spearmint Rhino]

"Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, flooded more with sheer panic than with water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal"

I like the idea of this. It should be an ongoing series, Go With Hitchens, in which our intrepid reporter gamely subjects himself to all the coalition practices, from carpet-bombing to nude humiliation, he's been endorsing in recent years.

[Ray de Galles]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

You'd imagine Hitchens regularly suffers nude humiliation.

[Mumpo]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

I can well imagine what the 'pre-arranged signal' was.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

When you're using a pre-arranged signal, it's not torture, it's BDSM play.

[N est à?]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, flooded more with sheer panic than with water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal

Is this the effect of waterboarding though, or just what happens when Hitchens goes 5 minutes without a drink?

[G-Man]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

And next week Christopher will experience what it's like to be raped by consensually agreeing to rough anal sex.

[Ginger Yellow]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

While it's nice to see Hitchens
experience the consequences of his rhetoric, this isn't the first time something like this has done. Last year, a former SERE instructor talked about his personal experiences with waterboarding and unequivocally declared it torture.

[Guest]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

I just watched the video. It was really grim. what's worst it is looked like it was so little water. I think it was quite brave of him actually, to do this and also to then say it changed his mind. Of course there's lots of silly in the article, like the bit about seeing who can hold out the longest, but maybe it'll convince some doubters. Especially when he talks about the long-term effects.

[Guest]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Full article here

[DCI Harry Batt]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Doesn't it just make him seem even more of a moron? He actually has to go through this charade in order to understand that this is torture?

[WOM]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

No. He's a journalist, and as such, his 'independent voice' adds another dimension to the story. Instead of prisoners saying "I was tortured" and politicians/military people saying "it isn't torture", he provides another, 'uninvested' perspective. And it's an experiment I wouldn't have had the balls to endure.

[wingco]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Is there a God? An afterlife? Christopher Hitchens stabs himself to death in order to double-check.

I'm torn between admiration of Hitchens for going through with this and agreeing with TonTon that it seems like a pretty dumb thing to have done, and reflects poorly on his judgment (or latterday myopia) if he ever actually thought waterboarding was anything other than torture.

[G-Man]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

The whole thing is a stunt; a sensationalist hack staging a sensationalist stunt to state the fucking obvious.

I just read a very good piece on how sexism wasn't to blame for Hilary Clinton's primary defeat by one of the Hitchens clan. Don't know whether I was him, but I had just started to respect the name Hitchens again. But this is just stunt, and a rather tasteless one at that.

[WOM]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

reflects poorly on his judgment (or latterday myopia) if he ever actually thought waterboarding was anything other than torture.

I think there's much to be lauded in thinking one thing, and expounding upon it, and then experiencing that thing, changing your opinion and expounding against it. While we may be either for or against waterboarding, based on its description, to experience it and be against it carries a certain, informed weight.

[wingco]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Sure - but fancy thinking it in the first place.

[Reed John]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

"Annihilatingly" is a shit word.

[Guest]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

WornOldMotorbike wrote:

it's an experiment I wouldn't have had the balls to endure.

I'd do it. I could dine out on telling that story for months.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

I'm torn between unimpresed at the latest attention-grabbing antics og HMS Hitchens, and gratitude that on this point, at least, he's willing to put his sheer and utter twaddle to the test.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Suggested subtitle; "Well, I guess that settles it..."

[DCI Harry Batt]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Hitchens an "independent voice"?

Mmmmhmmmm

[Wyatt Earp]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

I can't find the article in Slate in which he suggested that waterboarding might fall short of torture, but here's a quote from an article in 2004 about Abu Ghraib, which suggests that during at least some of his "hawk" years he's had firm views on where the line should be drawn:

Skill, in these matters [interrogation], depends on taking pains and not on inflicting them. You make the chap go through his story several times, preferably on video, and then you ask his friends a huge number of tedious questions, and then you go through it all again to check for discrepancies, and then you watch the first (very boring and sexless) video all over once more, and then you make him answer all the same questions and perhaps a couple of new and clever ones. If you have got the wrong guy—and it does happen—you let him go and offer him a ride home and an apology. And you know what? It often works. Only a lazy and incompetent dirtbag looks for brutal shortcuts so that he can get off his shift early.

[G-Man]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

WornOldMotorbike wrote:

QUOTE:
it's an experiment I wouldn't have had the balls to endure.

I'd do it. I could dine out on telling that story for months.

I suspect that was Hitchens' reasoning as well.

[WOM]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

Hitchens an "independent voice"?

Mmmmhmmmm

Sorry. I meant someone who's neither the interrogator nor the interrogated; both of whom have a vested interest in their side of the story being seen as the 'true' one.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

I'm a bit lost there, WOM. I don't recall having heard anything from the torture victims, as it goes. It's not like there are torture victims on one side, torturers on the other, and we're sitting here thinking "hmmm, is making people think they're about to die from drowning torture, or is it not? I wonder.".

Is it? Are we? Are you?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Waterboarding IS torture, says Hitchens

OK, if you've convinced a number of people, through argument, that this treatment is fine and dandy and you then, over time, come to strongly suspect it isn't what options do you have?

1) Saying nothing would be hypocritical.

2) Arguing against the treatment, as you did for it, is likely to make you look intellectually flabby and unlikely to carry the opinions of the majority of your audience on future issues.

3) Enduring the treatment moves the goalposts. Like it or not for many people experience trumps argument. It may be your only shot at convincing your acolytes that, though you were wrong initially, they should give you credit for being willing to test your opinions by encountering reality.

Sure he's a prat for proselytizing on behalf of torture in the first place but, off the top of my head, I can't think of a more effective method of saying he was wrong.