This doesn’t really interest me that much, but a lot of you are talking about it in the comments, so I might as well link to it and get it over with. Here is Mancow being waterboarded and deciding it is torture:
A couple points:
1.) I’m not sure why we have to keep waterboarding wingnut radio hosts to prove that torture is in fact torture, but this is just starting to get silly. How many times have we now waterboarded someone like this to prove what we have known all along- that waterboarding is torture.
2.) One of the things that supposedly separates humans from other animals is that we are able to learn from the experiences of other people. Apparently this ability is not available to right-wing radio hosts.
3.) Not to diminish Mancow’s experience, but if he thought that was torture, think what the real deal must be like. You are snatched out of nowhere, flown across the world, kept awake for days on end in a freezing room with little food, woken every time you fall asleep on your metal bed, thrown against the wall with that lovely procedure known as collaring, slapped, had dogs threatening you, yelled at and beaten, and so on and so forth. That goes on for a couple weeks to soften you up, then you are dragged by multiple burly men and waterboarded repeatedly. You have no dead man’s switch like Hitchens did, you have no “safe” word to stop the process, there are no cameras and friends there to make sure you are alright. These people have been abusing you non-stop for days or weeks, for all you know this is when they finally kill you.
Of course it is torture. I’m sick and tired of having this stupid damned debate.
schrodinger's cat
I agree, can we talk about Tunch instead?
dbrown
I have a dream: ass-wipe shit for brains cheney the bloodly handed pig aggree’s to prove all liberals wrong and will undergo waterboarding.
Roger Moore
You and I may know that it’s torture, but many of the wingnuts are still denying it. It’s much more likely to sink in for them if somebody they trust, like a
tribal elderwingnut radio host, says so. It seems as though the torture defenders are throwing up a whole series of defenses:It isn’t really torture
It wasn’t illegal because of the OLC memos
It helped up stop the bad guys
If we really want to shut down the torturers, we’re going to have to kill their objections one at a time. This is, or at least can be, part of that process.
jon
He actually got a much milder version of it. He was told when it was coming and didn’t have the full waterboarding kit going. I’d pay 19.99 plus shipping and handling to watch various conservative talk show hosts get waterboarded.
stevie314159
To rephrase an old joke:
What do you call it when you waterboard five wingnut radio hosts?
A good start.
JasonF
@Roger Moore: You forgot about the latest wignut defense, which is, of course “Nancy Pelosi ! ! ! 1 ! one !”
Ninerdave
Mancow is fucking tool:
I was stuck in that traffic. Still to this day I’d punch him on sight for that bullshit. Of course the story is a wingnut myth. Fucking dickhead.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Kept naked, put in stress positions for days, had feces and menstrual blood smeared on you, subjected to sensory deprivation until you go mad. Also.
And in some cases, we did kill them.
Nice job, John.
blondie
Here’s a thought (although given the apparent IQ of this douchebag, the thought is admittedly not a likely one)- what if he’s come to this conclusion on his own, but has found that the only way he can “credibly” [and I use that term loosely] do a 180 from his previous bloviating is to stage some come-to-Jesus moment like this?
If this is what it takes, then I’m all for it, in fact, I’m willing to start a non-profit group that would go around and offer such charitable 6 second waterboarding to all right-wing talk and radio show hosts. At some point, we would theoretically reach critical mass and might actually be able to have some intelligent discussion about the topic. Donations graciously accepted.
I know, Friday afternoon hallucinations strike again. (sigh)
Apsaras
I bet he touched the stove a lot when he was a kid.
Mike S
One part of me wants to see the waterboarder continue even after asked to stop. I’d like to see him continue while screaming that the wingnut “DID YOU RAPE A BABY” until the wingnut admits to raping a baby.
But that is the baser side of me. The side that might enjoy watching that kind of horror.
The side that the wingnuts let reign over themselves.
I don’t want to be like them.
grimc
@jon:
Actually, the Marine said, “I’m going to start on 5, okay? One…two…I lied.” (Begins pouring).
Nice touch, I thought.
Knockout Ed
what kind of fucking name is “Mancow” anyways. What a piece of shit on my shoe.
TenguPhule
And it won’t stop till the torture apologists are dragged up to a wall and shot.
The Turtle Moves.
Roger Moore
@JasonF:
You’re right. How could I forget the “I know you are but what am I” defense? I guess there are the “it’s all just political infighting” and “it works for Jack Bauer” defenses, too.
MobiusKlein
@Roger Moore:
If those folks really believed in the third line, they would have withdrawn from the Geneva Conventions / Convention against Torture.
But they don’t have the guts to admit it, and insist the crime is in showing the world we blew the treaty off on the sly.
blech
Beauzeaux
There are dozens and dozens and dozens of wingnut radio hosts who make oodles of money for denying reality to their listeners. If this is one way to get a bit of reality onto their shows, and therefore into the ears of the people who listen to that crap and believe in unreality, so be it.
jon
@grimc: Yeah, but Hitchens’ experience was more authentic since they didn’t tell him at all when they were going to start.
geg6
I’m tired of it, too. But we must keep pounding away at it or we are all lost. I truly believe this is a true battle for our country and must never stop fighting for it. This DFH loves her country and the Constitution and I will fight for it. And if part of that fight is having this argument over and over until we finally win, then so be it.
UnkyT
Did he really need to look at what came out of his nose after he blew it. He’s on camera for God’s sake.
Violet
Yeah, no kidding. If they’re going to simulate waterboarding, why don’t they do it like they would in a real situation. Grab wingnut host at some unknown time, blindfold him, tie him down for real – not just tie his feet, but tie his hands too. Maybe take off most of his clothing, because that makes people feel more vulnerable. Don’t let him ask questions or have a “safe cow.” Just DO it.
If the stuff Mancow and others have experienced is something they describe as torture, I can only imagine how they’d feel if they experienced what the real waterboarding is like. The stuff they’re doing here is Waterboarding Theater.
tammanycall
@blondie:
That’s actually a really interesting theory & I hope it’s the case. Maybe he realizes how much influence he holds over his rabid, bloodthirsty audience and he’s trying to turn them on this issue, too.
(I might be taking your original thought and making it a bit too Pollyanna.)
Nicole Belle
You forgot to add that the said waterboarding happens to you 183 times in a month–that’s six times a day. If Mancow had been tortured like this 183 times, I’m pretty sure I could have gotten him to confess that he committed 9/11.
I don’t think the debate is on whether it’s torture (although I note that the milquetoast press still refuse to call it that–preferring the Cheney euphemism of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques), but whether the ends justify the means. If the Bush administration kept us safe for the 7 1/2 years after 9/11 (that of course, ignores the anthrax scare and the more than quadrupling of terrorist acts worldwide) because they waterboarded people hundreds of times, then it’s acceptable practice to them.
anonevent
These people literally have no empathy. Nothing happens unless it happens to them. Because they do not know anyone who has cancer, it isn’t a bad thing to go through. They haven’t been waterboarded, so it isn’t torture. There are just some people – we call them conservatives – who cannot mentally put themselves in someone else’s position, they have to be shoved into it.
El Tiburon
What I find truly amazing is that these wingnuts really believe that waterboarding is really nothing more than tossing some water on a prisoner’s face.
I can never figure out if what wingnuts offer up is what they truly believe, or just for public consumption.
Do they really think being incarcerated at Gitmo is like a little vacation in paradise with Grilled Chicken and steaming-hot sides of baked potatoes or rice?
Are these people truly this fucking insane?
The Tim Channel
Rightwing Logic
Rushophile sees a steaming pile of ‘something’ on his lawn. Investigating he finds:
It looks like shit.
It smells like shit.
He takes a bit and it tastes like shit.
He’s glad he didn’t step in it.
Enjoy.
donovong
What Violet said. I want more and more of these idiots who claim it is not torture to try this, and want it to coniune until there is nobody left who denys it. THEN we can stop the conversation. And I volunteer to administer the process at my own expense.
gnomedad
Sean Hannity, your table is ready.
oh really
The key word here is “supposedly.” In fact, most people (Americans, at least) appear to be utterly incapable of learning anything unless and until it happens to them (even a loved one is often not close enough the get the message across).
Unfortunately, it isn’t just “right-wing radio hosts” who can’t learn from the experiences of others. Look at how many Democrats have supported the roll back of safeguards that were put in place to prevent virtually all of the problems now facing us.
JasonF
What you guys are talking about is “empathy,” which is, as we have learned in the last week or so, nothing more than a code-word for judicial activism.
Krista
Wouldn’t “sociopaths” be another word for that as well?
Politically Lost
And feasted on paint chips.
Mark S.
Any pundit who denies it’s torture should undergo it. That means Hannity, Coulter, Rush, and any other douchebag who is still out there denying it. They should be called out on it constantly. I don’t care if it is repetitive or boring. There are still too many people who deny it is torture.
sgwhiteinfla
As funny as it sounds I would be willing to bet that Mancow getting waterboarded does more to push wingnut opinion closer to saying waterboarding is torture than any speech from President Obama ever could. Such is the nature of our culture today and our discourse.
If Sean Hannity ever does it I hate to say it but I believe wingnuts would be out in the street calling for torture investigations. It is what it is.
The Populist
Amen, John. Every word of your post is right on the money.
Isn’t Mancow a liberal? I dunno much about him outside of Howard Stern hating on him.
If we want to be “safer” in this world we must adhere to our values regardless of what a bunch of thugs do. I don’t care if the muslim radicals torture. WE DO NOT TORTURE. When I make this point I always find some asshole telling me that “we aren’t like them, don’t go there.” But, alas, we are if we do what they do.
Just cuz a bad guy uses torture doesn’t make it right. PERIOD.
Suck on it, Malkin.
Terri
What a great fundraising idea. How much money would you donate to charity, to be able to waterboard some wingnut?
Ajay Kalra
The sad part is nothing is going to come out of it. We are stuck in finding the effectiveness of torture or “Pelosi knew it” and other irrelevant deeds. No one seems to care if any laws were broken or how legal it would be if it happens to an American service personnel.
Left Coast Tom
Item 2 pretty much answers item 1…
LanceThruster
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-Douglas Adams [Last Chance to See]
geg6
The Populist: Mancow is a wingnut of epic and epically stupid proportions. He now knows he’s complicit in advocating torture. This is a good thing even if it’s tiresome to all of us who already knew that.
The Populist
He’s a fucking sissy. All wingnuts are. They talk the talk, but can’t walk the walk.
Hannity KNOWS if he does it, he will be exposed because I doubt he can fake a calm reaction to the procedure. He will lose it and thus will look like a pussy on Youtube and other places for eternity.
They are pussies. Rush is a pussy. Sean is a pussy. All of them are. Prove to me you aren’t, a-holes and allow yourselves to be waterboarded. What’s the harm if it’s not torture, right?
The Populist
Thanks Geg. Appreciate the info. He’s a tool then, but it’s good to hear even tools can admit they were wrong.
The Populist
But that’s the American Way! We like to talk a good game, but when it comes down to actually doing what’s right, we take the easy way out while patting ourselves on the back.
JL
@Krista: Yes
John, MSM will tell you whether or not it’s torture. I like the polls they are taking which of course prove how ignorant the responders are.
The Populist
If Americans were smart, they’d call Ensign on his “they have better health care than most Americans” meme. So if he thinks THEY have better health care, isn’t that admitting the very system he defends blows?
Jon
@The Populist: Nah. He went hard right when his ratings tanked and he discovered that dumping on Imus was popular in 06.
anonevent
@Krista: I think the only thing that keeps it from being sociopathic is their god prevents them from hurting other white people.
The Grand Panjandrum
Jesse Ventura:
He could probably get him to admit to being the 20th hijacker as well.
Old Gringo
Remember The film Marathon Man, with Olivier and Hoffman?
I went to a dentist as young child, back in the ’50s, who didn’t believe in giving children novocaine. I had more than a few fillings done without benefit of any anaesthetic. This is all the more puzzling to me because my parents were both medical doctors – and possibly sadists.
What gets lost in the debate about all this is that if and when some of the architects of this policy stand for their crimes, they will employ the necessity defense which has a long and auspicious history in our jurisprudence and is a legitimate defense in many cases. We don’t prosecute and penalize people for illegal acts committed in their own defense or the defense of others.
It won’t help them much if it can be proven that “the necessity” was to provide “intelligence” as a pretext for an invasion of a country not involved in planning or executing 9/11 or any 9/11 style attacks.
smiley
As someone who almost drowned because of a stupid mistake by a probably drunk river guide on a white water rafting trip on the Salmon river in SE Washington state, I think Mancow was primed for panic once the water started. If he did indeed have to be revived after drowning when he was a kid, the sensation of drowning would be overwhelming. It took me years to get over my experience, and I was an adult.
That said, I only came close to drowning once. Feeling like you’re about to drown once, let alone 83 times, is indeed torture. No doubt about it.
JenJen
Speaking of war, and torture, and war, the Cincinnati Enquirer has an excellent piece about some of our local, female veterans of the Iraq War, and it is disturbing and jarring and stomach-churning.
Cheney’s War. Don’t ever forget it.
Rick Taylor
If I had no other reason, this alone would be enough to ensure I’d never consider voting for a Republican at least at the federal level in my life. How the hell did we get here.
Old Gringo
The short version.
The long version began at the ’64 Republican National Convention and its aftermath.
Roger Moore
@El Tiburon:
I think you have to be careful about what you mean when you say “these wingnuts”. I think that there are wingnut leaders and wingnut followers, and they believe different things. The problem is that the wingnut followers get all their information (or at least the majority of the information they believe) from the wingnut leaders. When the unscrupulous leaders lie through their teeth, their gullible follower actually believe it. So some of the wingers probably do think that waterboarding is nothing more than tossing some water on a prisoner’s face. They won’t believe differently until their leaders admit the truth, which is why it’s important that right wing talk radio hosts stand up and admit that it’s torture.
JGabriel
John Cole
Amen, brother.
.
Martin
@Old Gringo:
My dentists all believed in using it, and almost exclusively used lidocane. I never understood why since it just was one more thing to hurt when they gave me the injection. Turns out I’m resistant to it and it was doing almost nothing at all. Thankfully I figured that out before the doctor started cutting into my testicles last week.
@smiley:
I had a similar experience as a kid. I’m fine in the water in general, but I cannot relax in a chlorinated pool – I associate the smell with the drowning event. Thankfully my neighborhood pool switched to saline last year and it’s insanely better.
Martin
Read
Old Gringo
Lidocaine is generally used topically first to numb the region before the injection. It is also injectable. I have a high tolerance to most of this family of drugs and have to make sure the dentist uses enough and gives me time for it to get the full effect. It will usually do the trick but they all remark that I’m one of the patients who needs 2 to 3 times the dosage of anyone else.
Martin
This last doctor tried using a lot but it still wasn’t doing much so then switched over to something else. He told me to let the doctors know to not even bother with lidocane or anything related and wrote down the stuff he finally used. I should put that in my wallet.
satby
Mancow’s an ass, and he and the other right-wing he-men all think THEY’LL be the guys who can take it and show those whiney pussy libtards that it’s not torture.
I never thought I’d see someone like Jesse Ventura be the voice of sanity in this discussion.
Old Gringo
@Martin and the other posters
There is no substitute for Altemeyer’s work but it is a bit long. The next best thing is Paul Rosenberg’s recap in 3 parts posted at MyDD
That’s part 3 and the links to part 1 and 2 are down at the bottom of that page. Paul is a regular poster at Open Left now.
JK
@Mark S.:
That list would have to include Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Joe Scarborough, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Mark Levin.
Little
Yerp, that’s what Isaid.
omen
dumb caller on cspan complained obama’s opposition to torture and waterboarding tipped his hand and showed our tactics to the terrorists. now they’ll know what to expect if they get captured.
how does that compromise security? isn’t obama’s anti-torture stance actually beneficial for our side? whose a more dangerous insurgent? someone who knows he’ll get quasi fair treatment after being captured? or someone who thinks he’ll be constantly tortured, condemned to die a slow death in prison? someone who thinks he’ll get fair treatment isn’t going to go to extraordinary measures to avoid being captured, such as pulling a grenade clip and blowing himself up when surrounded.
caller has the argument backwards. having a policy of torture inflames passions & heightens the threat against the troops. i’d be surprised if this policy hasn’t fueled not a few of their deaths.
ChristianPinko
I used to live in Chicago and occasionally would listen to Mancow on the radio. The reason I would do this was to see how much I could take before changing the station / turning the radio off. I don’t think I ever lasted longer than about two minutes. But I can’t help finding today’s news kind of ironic.
Richard Bottoms
Basically Hannity is a pussy.
gnomedad
One recurring response to Mancow at Hotair is roughly “See, it works!”
LD50
I think waterboarding wingnut radio hosts is a worthy endeavor in and of itself.
evinfuilt
Rush couldn’t risk waterboarding, you know with that deadly anal cyst of his that got him out of Vietnam.
Oh dear, I had to check reality… Truth is always scary.
Pasquinade
Wonder why so many rightwing sites/blogs are not reporting this.
;)
Martian Buddy
We don’t waterboard them because we have to — we waterboard them because we want to. >:3
atari_age
Erm… I’m sorry…
But…
Man Cow?
How am I supposed to take this seriously?
Litlebritdifrnt
@JenJen:
I am going to be politically incorrect here but females should never be sent to war, we ain’t cut out for it, it is not in our DNA, or our genes, it is simply wrong, you will never convince me otherwise. Our entire psyche is to nurture, war is wrong to us, and no female should ever be subjected to it. When will the politically correct crowd grow a clue?
Andy
Hopefully the discussion will now turn to “what would you confess to in order to make it stop?”
b-psycho
Someone needs to have the balls to openly root underneath all the pseudo-legal justifications, ironic relativism, & outright lies, and point out what’s truly at the core of this “it’s not torture, and if it is, so what? You’re just a librul wimp!” bullshit:
BIGOTRY
Give a wingut some truth serum, and they’ll tell you that in their mind the inhabitants of the part of the world we’re currently occupying over this crap are all, without exception, absolute evil jihadi death-to-amerikka KILLKILLKILL subhuman mud people who have no rights because they’re not
whiteAmerican. They can’t just fucking say that because it’d ensure that they never hold a position of more power than dogcatcher, and make even the least interested observer start questioning the entire idea of US “leadership” in the world (since the loudest proponents of it are white supremacists).Pennypacker
I’ve read so many wingnut whackjobs argue that real torture is cutting off fingers and such. What they don’t appreciate — and what CIA interrogators will tell you — is that waterboarding is the superior, perfect form of torture.
A victim only has 10 fingers, and cutting off any digit leaves demonstrable proof that the guy was tortured. Whereas waterboarding can be done indefinitely with no physical scars. And psychologically it goes beyond mere pain and invokes immediate, pronounced terror.
gravel kucinich paul nader
anthrax intimidation
monsters on parade
extortion blackmail bribery
aipac’s israel-first dual-nationals
federal reserve is unaccountable?
the 911 crime cover-up of the century
nader paul kucinich gravel
mckinney ventura too
perotcharts.com
RAGE
Andrew
Days and weeks, no try YEARS of being in that hell.
Old Gringo
@Litlebritdifrnt
Amazons like Wonder Woman might disagree. Not to mention Boudicca and Joan of Arc and… the list is too long. Here’s a top ten.
anonevent
This from GOS is worth the read on this subject.
DZ
Waterboard a Wingnut for Christ
Be the first one on your block to waterboard a wingnut for Christ. Help the wingnuts recover their sense of superiority by guiding them to the core of their beliefs. Waterboarding a wingnut strengthens the homeland. It’s just $100 per waterboarding session and, guess what, you can water board more than one wingnut. Sorry, there is a limit if 10 waterboardings per customer, but, if you buy a 10-pack, you get a 10% discount. So, call today and help save America.
Waterboard a wingnut for Christ.
Note: All schedules are tentative based on the number of waterboardees and waterboarders plus time to enlist additional wingnuts as required. Visa and Mastercard are accepted but no checks and no paypal. Walk-ins welcome but only with cash. Call today.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Old Gringo:
Meh – fuck Joan of Ark, she got burned. I am so totally out of the politically correct loop I know, but it is not RIGHT, for fucks sake, women are not meant to go to war, they simply are not, and fuck them women with a chip on their shoulder who say that they are. If you take away a man’s knowledge that he is the protector then you take away his psyche. Let us not remove a man’s desire to protect a female please. Cause I kind of like it, and without it women are basically screwed.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Oh and before I forget, let us not forget that said women are being so damn righteous and all are putting a bunch of men in danger, a woman in combat is a danger to the men in combat, you will never convince me otherwise. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. A woman doing her thing and being so womanly and all, is directly responsible for the death of male soldiers. Think about that.
Veritas78
We have to keep waterboarding wingnuts because they want us to. It’s a public service — it’s a kink thing. They don’t know how to get off otherwise.
asiangrrlMN
I have to admit that I keep getting tripped up on his name as well.
@Litlebritdifrnt: I agree and disagree with you. Women are nurturers, yes, but we are also fiercely protective. Besides, if there is war, then women have to do our part, too. It’s not fair to ask the men to go get killed. It’s not like men are complete sociopaths, too. Plus, if there are more women in the armed forces, perhaps we can slowly shift the way of thinking from ultra-macho to simply macho-plus.
I am tired of debating this as well. I really am. Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, and all the biggies in the W. administration should agree to undergo waterboarding–the real thing, not this simulation–if they are so doggone sure it’s not torture. It will never happen, though, and we will continue to debate over waterboarding while ignoring the other devastating cruelty we inflicted upon these men.
<b<Litlebritdifrnt, I don’t agree with you, but I can see that you are firm in your belief. We shall have to agree to disagree.
Litlebritdifrnt
@asiangrrlMN:
ain’t that the best his about this blog. We can do just that.
omen
i just caught the video on tv. wrongly assumed the youtube video was more trivial or reduced the subject to a joke, so i didn’t bother.
are you kidding me?? you don’t see the value of this? just because you’re tired of discussing it doesn’t mean we have the luxury of giving up on the debate.
wilfred
I read that Michael Vick is getting out. Does anyone believe that he never thought, not once, that his treatment of animals was cruel?
He just didn’t give a shit. Some people may now be convinced that water boarding is torture, but they won’t give a shit either. In the real world it’s not done on humans, only wog Muslims, and even then only for a good cause.
It’s a reversal on the old New Yorker cartoon where the kid says its broccoli. Here the joke is: “Ok, so it’s torture, but let’s have some more of it”.
Ecks
Women may not be built for war, but I’m honestly not really convinced that men are either. As everyone who goes to war comes back saying, it’s hell. Straight up. That’s why 40% of vets get PTSD, and the rest have a lot of shitty shitty memories, and frequently broken bodies.
pseudonymous in nc
My NBC pilot, “Let’s Kidnap And Waterboard Neocon Filth” didn’t get greenlit this year, again. I say it’d get more viewers than “Cougar Town”.
Ian
I don’t think Mancow’s inability to believe that waterboarding is bad is a matter of stupidity or sociopathy, or if it is then we on this thread are also stupid and sociopathic.
The thing is that waterboarding doesn’t really look all that bad. It is not obvious that waterboarding is torture, as demonstrated by the people on this thread who find it funny to imagine doing it to people on the other end of the political spectrum.
I’m not sure how people can watch this video and laugh, because after four seconds under the jug Mancow’s a broken man. Watch the video. Everyone around him is laughing when he waves off the water, because it was just a few seconds, right? When he gets up he’s pale as a ghost and visibly shaking. He can’t talk, he can’t think straight. I’m not saying he can think straight at the best of times, but this is different. It’s really alarming to see how much fear he’s experiencing, this despite the fact that he knows in an abstract way that he’s perfectly safe. All it took was four seconds.
Mancow certainly thought this was going to be a joke. He thought to himself that “I go swimming, it’s going to be like being in the tub…I thought I could last 30 seconds, 60 seconds.” He lasted four. That’s so ridiculously short that it’s hard to believe. As the Populist said (#40 upthread) “He’s a fucking sissy.” Amen to that. A real man like me could hold out for at least fifteen seconds. You too, right? It’s just a little water, it can’t be that bad…
I’m guessing Mancow still can’t imagine how bad waterboarding is. Watch what happens when he tries to talk about what he just experienced. He pauses, he shudders, he gets this weird hollow stare. For a split second he has the face of a tortured person. I get the sense that some part of his brain is scrambling to block out some of the horror of the memory. If someone did this to him again, I suspect that the horror of the second time would still surprise him, being worse for him than he remembers, even though he might remember it as the worst four seconds of his life. Waterboarding could literally be unimaginably bad.
Just try to imagine how bad a form of torture must be if it can break a person in four seconds. Let’s compare it to the rack, say. Sure, you can break almost anyone’s spirit on the rack, but that method can’t push a person past their psychological breaking point six times a day. Try it and the victim will die. In contrast, you can waterboard a prisoner as much as you like so long as you’re careful about it. Six times a day is nothing — KSM got six sessions a day. Ten seconds of water, let him gasp, five seconds, let him gasp, water for five more seconds, then let him get in only a half a gasp before you pour some more, and then you’ll be ready to ask him your first question about Iraqi nuclear weapons. Your prisoner’s been pushed past the breaking point four times in less than a minute and the session’s just getting started. Hundreds of moments past the breaking point each day, each one seeming even worse than the victim remembered it being. Waterboarding might actually be the worst form of torture known to man. (Mind you I don’t really believe that, not on a gut level. It’s just a little water…)
Violet said (#20) that “the stuff they’re doing here is Waterboarding Theater.” True, what we see in the video is so very much less than what the American government does habitually. Mancow himself seems to have been expecting this to be torture theatre, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened. When it started he was “instantly” overwhelmed. Listen to what Mancow said: “that’s drowning,” just like the time when he almost died in a lake as a kid. Sure, it’s only four seconds of el-fake-o brand pseudo-waterboarding, but even that amounts to four seconds of drowning. At the end he sounds like he’s exceedingly angry at himself for having been so stupid enough as to sign up for this. “No way in hell… (pause) Had I known that it was that bad that I would not have done that.” (sic) Even by that point in the video when he’s had a couple of minutes to pull himself back together you can still hear a little of the fear underneath his posturing. Waterboarding is apparently so bad that even pseudoboarding is traumatic.
But we want to do it to him again, right? Yeah, just like what Violet said. That’s the ticket. We’ll grab him off the street, strip off his clothes, tie him down and pour water down his windpipe again and again and again. We don’t need no stinking safeword. We’ll keep doing it to him until he has that haunted look in his eyes for the rest of his life. Then we’ll grab another radio host – who’ll be next? We’d pay money to see it. We’d want to take turns holding the jug.
Really? That daydream is not OK, not at all. In the name of all that’s holy, think about what you’re saying –how can you want that to happen? How can you think that, even as revenge fantasy? Watch that video and take a good look at what four seconds of el-fake-o can do to somebody, and then tell me that you’d want to see what ten minutes of the real thing could do.
Maybe Mancow’s pseudoboarding still seems like a joke to you. Let’s try a more intense test of your capacity for empathy by cranking up the degree of detail as high as we can. Scroll to 2:16 of the video and pause it there. Let’s say that you and a half a dozen people are going to be holding him down. (Maybe your personal fantasy involves ropes, or straps of some kind. Some of you want to strip him naked. Run with whatever details you prefer, I’m just giving one possible version.) Let’s say there’s going to be one torturer holding each arm, one holding each leg, one person sitting on his chest, another guy holding his head in place and one more guy to hold the jug of water. Now take a good look at Mancow lying there in the video and try to imagine you and your torture team as part of the scene, in as much detail as possible. (is your team sadistic or grimly following orders, is your team in fatigues or street clothes, etc.) Let’s imagine that it’s your job to hold his right arm. That would put you in the foreground with your back to the camera. Got it? OK, now let the video run. You’re going to need to imagine yourself keeping a tight grip on that arm because he’s going to be thrashing more and more desperately as this goes on. You might need to drop the whole weight of your body onto his arm to keep him pinned. Don’t forget that there’s water everywhere; for realism, it’s important to imagine how slippery his skin would be under your fingers. It might help to dig your nails in. As your fantasy continues, don’t forget to glance up at his face from time to time. Do you see how he keeps spouting water, trying and failing to clear his mouth? (2:23) That means your team is doing it right. 2:25 is when your imagination will have to take over, because that’s when Mancow raises his hands to shield his face from the water. You don’t want to let him do that, do you? Keep the water coming. Let’s say that you give him a few seconds of air at 2:35 – what will you say to him as he begs for it to stop? You’ve certainly wiped the smile off his smug face. How will the fantasy play out for you? Do you smile when your buddy tilts the jug again?
As he’s lying there struggling, perhaps you’ll tell me that it’s poetic justice. He thought torture was such a great idea, so we’ll give it to him good and hard. The stupid wingnut asked for it. He had it coming. Funny, right?
For non-sociopaths, a waterboard-the-wingnuts fantasy is possible only if you refuse to imagine the details of the scenario. When you talk about waterboarding your least favorite radio host, you’ve demonstrated as serious a failure of empathy as that demonstrated by the wingnuts themselves. Maybe you didn’t vote for torture, but it sure seems to be fun for you to imagine a bad guy with his head under the tap. If you go in for that sort of thing, you should ask yourself why you find waterboarding jokes funny. Seriously, WTF America? Is this a joke to all of you, left and right?
I’ve just written a vast rant about how bad waterboarding is despite the fact that I can’t empathize with the victims either. I seriously cannot imagine myself being that busted up after four seconds of pseudotorture. This video actually did have some value for me, because it showed me that waterboarding must somehow be even worse than I had imagined. Mancow didn’t wuss out – look at him, he’s white as a sheet. If pseudoboarding can do that much that fast, I really don’t like to think what the real thing would do to a person. I’ve written at absurd length because I’m having trouble not thinking about it.
I don’t know whether to hope that secret tapes of KSM’s torture are someday released or to pray that they never are.
Gina
I’m stuck on the name Mancow. I’m not a radio listener for the most part, so I thought of this guy.
bob h
I actually think it would be good to release the new Abu Ghreib torture photos now, to reinforce just how degenerate and depraved the practices Liz Cheney is vociferously calling for are.
satby
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Don’t presume to speak for all women because you’d be, ummm, wrong.
Jim Pharo
I think there’s a real lesson in all this, which JMM lays out. A goodly portion of our opposition is made up of people who aren’t synical manipulators, or committed ideologues, or even people who have had a particular kind of life experience that leads them to believe that “every man for himself” is the best approach.
No, the truth — and it’s a truth that can be hard to accept — is that most of these people are just plain dumb. Ignorant. And the ones who have had success failing upward (Cheney Family, I’m looking at you!) are the ones we least suspect of being simpletons. I think it’s because we tend to avoid thinking the worst of others, and tend to project our own values, thoughts, etc., on others.
But the truth is our enemy is ignorance, nothing more. (In other words, there ARE no principled arguments against universal health care.)
Snarla
Replace “females” with “chickenhawks” and “nurture” with “war mong” and “war is wrong to us” with “war is for poor people,” and it all makes sense.
Snarla, US Army veteran
omen
@Jim Pharo:
light bulb moments are far and few in between. it’s not easy for people to admit they were wrong. it just seems to me that eureka moments should be applauded, instead of used as a set up for more ridicule. otherwise, people might never change their minds.
Jim Pharo
@omen
I’m not trying to ridicule anyone. I am not calling these folks stupid as a pejorative. It’s just descriptive.
I remember when Laura Ingraham used to rail against gay people as the somehow deserving of the scourge of AIDS. Then she found out someone close to her was gay man with AIDS. She changed her tune on her previous views overnight, saying she just hadn’t thought about it from the right point of view. In other words, she was ignorant.
I make the point not to mock Mancow (though he is as deserving as can be, if you ever listened to him), but to point out that our opponents are not sophisticated, not anything, except uninformed and ignorant, all too often, gladly so.
omen
i wasn’t saying you, jim. you were being supportive. i meant the general tone of the thread.
James
He should change his name to “Mamcow”or “Wusscow”. I’ll just bet he cried to mommy every time his brothers dunked him in the pool. He’s not a man…he’s a mam.
James
Mamcow. You cried to mommy every time your brothers dunked you in the pool didn’t you? Waaaa
James
Mamcow…you cried to mommy every time your brothers dunked you in the pool didn’t you. Waaaaaaa