i wonder if beer boarding would have been a better
choice for christopher

Does Dewars and water count as water torture for Hitchens?

I can't think of any one better to waterboard, except maybe for some terrorists.

Now imagine it without the kid gloves and a healthy dose of animosity.

No, it's not torture at all.

Don't worry, Snuggly, the Security Bear will protect Hitch.

http://www.markfiore.com/constitutional_compromise_0

harley @ 8:

Would of been better if the people doing the waterboarding did not speak his English, stripped him naked, shoved a broom handle up his ass, put a rucksack over his head before the waterboarding started. Would of been more realistic.

That ranks along side with being on the Isle of Wight on a sunday, banned by the Geneva convention.
IOW wonderful place for short visits...

MsJoanne @ 7:

Now imagine it without the kid gloves and a healthy dose of animosity.

No, it's not torture at all.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. (actually, yours and harley @8)

I'd love to administer the experiment to John Yoo. Really.

Would it be bad form to say listening to Christopher Hitchens blather on about anything on TV is a form of torture?

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

They were false confessions, just to stop the torture? No kidding? /sarcasm

How much water did they douse him with? A cup?

mudshark @ 19:

How much water did they douse him with? A cup?

see the dixie cup in the backround

Hitchens is an asshole but he is smarter and better educated than all of us combined and he writes like a dream.

Now, he was the perfect guy for this demonstration because he supported the war and all the crap!!

Next should be Kit Bond R-MO.

It didn't take long to drop the metal bars!!

Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s @ 18:

I'm a liberal and I'm FOR waterboarding and torture.

That's because I really can't think of a fairer way to punish the Bush Administration and their supporters

If capital punishment for political corruption becomes law, then I will no longer support torture.

Treason and War Profiteering are both punishable by death.

bob dobbs @ 20:

mudshark @ 10:

karl @ 1:

i wonder if beer boarding would have been a better
choice for christopher

I was going to say gin martinis.
wow, he really does have phobias. Although I think he's a pussy, I have to give him credit for trying.

You tell him, tough guy.That goes for the rest of the mowroons up stream who think it's funny to make booze jokes about our "proud, courageous soldiers" torturing people. I wonder, I truly do if the reaction to the first captured Us soldier who is shown in a grainy video being tortured will produce the same har har funny jokes?

Hey boob. blow it out yer arse . this went over yer head boob.

Ol' Hitch is not exactly the picture of health these days, is he? I'd recommend he change his lifestyle and see his physician.

Hitchens isn't even wet
Not the kind of waterboarding I have seen on TV where the whole body was dunked under.

ferrofluid (Obama 08) @ 28:

I wonder how many people realize that the US government (John Yoo report /regulations) torture rules allows anybody to be tortured,
including wives and children of suspects, which includes US citizens, US residents, visiting aliens, detainees etc.
as long as the potential goal of retrieving information seems really important at the time.

Yoo is on my personal detainee list should law and order break down. That fucking traitor.

Carol @ 31:

Hitchens isn't even wet
Not the kind of waterboarding I have seen on TV where the whole body was dunked under.

this was much more effecient and less dramatic. those guys had done this MANY times. it was almost effortless on their part.

and quickly made Hitch feel very squishy.

Carol @ 31:

Hitchens isn't even wet
Not the kind of waterboarding I have seen on TV where the whole body was dunked under.

The actually waterboarding is at a much steeper angle. All most 90 degrees - strive for that total helpless feeling.

BobbyG @ 33:

ferrofluid (Obama 08) @ 28:

I wonder how many people realize that the US government (John Yoo report /regulations) torture rules allows anybody to be tortured,
including wives and children of suspects, which includes US citizens, US residents, visiting aliens, detainees etc.
as long as the potential goal of retrieving information seems really important at the time.

Yoo is on my personal detainee list should law and order break down. That fucking traitor.

They serve a higher master than America and the US constitution. The REPUBLICAN (org crime) family and its godsquad brownshirts.

Poor guy didn't even get a complimentary photo-op with Lynndie England.

roobeer @ 41:

Poor guy didn't even get a complimentary photo-op with Lynndie England.

No volunteers to complete the naked human pyramid. Total lack of patriotism on their parts.

bob dobbs @ 42:

Hey boob. blow it out yer arse . this went over yer head boob.

Such a witty guy. Go back to Fresno, freeper.

LOL, you're alright bob. heh. Fresno.
close, but not quite. You got the state right.
wow, never been called a freeper before.
But obviously this went over your head bob.
thats ok. we'll work it out some other time.
Have a nice evening Bob.

He thought someone said 'be teabagged by Andrew Sullivan".

abarts @ 47:

He thought someone said 'be teabagged by Andrew Sullivan".

that's fxxking funny

CowBoy Bob in Austin @ 38:

What?!? Do any of you think that BEING GODLY... or paying lip service to Christain values would make Hitchens' observations more valuable... or more right?

Don't be absurd! It was our "I have Jesus in my heart" president that got us into this horrendous situation in the first place. Christain conservatives seem to scream the loudest to support the fact that this country is condoning TORTURE on prisoners.

What Would Jesus Do... hold the prisoner's nose shut... or pour the water into his gaping, gagging mouth?

Athiests are able to recognize travesties of justice too. Actually, maybe athiests are BETTER at it... considering what all of our GOD FEARING Republican leaders have accomplished since 9/11.

I was a little upset reading a few of the anti-atheist comments, but then I realized people were probably just venting over Hitchens being an War-on-Terror supporter and only now realizing what happened because of this "war". The "atheist" comment (I hope) was just superfluous.

MountainMan23 @ 48:

From the NYTimes article
China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

.. The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”
..

The administration KNEW they would get false confessions.

In fact they PLANNED on getting false confessions.

Why?

Obviously we can't discuss "who is responsible for the 9-11 attacks" here .. but it's gotta he OBVIOUS by now that the Bush administration has gone to great lengths to cover up who is responsible.

Right?

I've searched in vain for the link, but I recall it was Addington, Cheney's Chief of Staff, who requested that the SERE techniques be used at Guantanamo.

i've always believed they wanted to piss off the arabs
keep the opposition engauged i don't support the alleged bad guys i support the constitution....just like the habeus corpus case obama supported it saying they have the right to request a hearing that's all he said the key word is request
the trolls want to say we support the terrorists....doesn't make any sense darwin is rolling around in his grave

Amazing .. I quote the article .. and point out that it is OBVIOUS that the Bush administration WANTED false confessions about the perpetration of 9-11 .. and the post disappears .. technical glitch or censorship?

republican = insanity!

I just can't believe the question exists. I always say:

If it's not torture, then how does it work???

Yes, would not surprise me one bit to learn that the admin wanted false confessions as a means to convict these people, instead of as a means to obtain any information.

Ignoring Hitchens' previous remarks, he's mostly a guy raised in the West with some phobias of not continuing to live. Yes, this demonstration was far "easier" than what our detainees face - isn't that the point? Those of you who read C&L regularly and check out the links for the full story know damn well that waterboarding is one of the least damaging tactics the US uses. Add threats of wives and children being raped after the detainee has been sodomized with a broom handle or an auger...as ferrofluid reminds us, "the US government (John Yoo report /regulations) torture rules allows anybody to be tortured, including wives and children of suspects".

The courts just threw out the death penalty for rapists of children. Perhaps they should consider the US interrogation techniques - break a person's life, you get broken. I'd support that. Treason? Yup, let's waterboard. War crimes? Waterboard! It's not torture, it's the latest and greatest in humane rehabilitation!

Add to the above list in #64:

Karen Hughes
Ari Fleischer
Dana Perino
Scott McClellan
David Addington
John Yoo
Paul Wolfowitz
Colonoscopy Powell

Doug Feith

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was boarded 100 times in 2 weeks.

The guy is scum and should, after a fair trial, probably be locked up (IMHO) for life. But this is not justice. After two sessions he probably told them anything they wanted to know. What did they possibly hope to gain with the other 98 attempts? Propaganda?

It just doesn't make any sense, unless they enjoyed doing it.

MountainMan23 @ 48:

From the NYTimes article
China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

.. The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”
..

The administration KNEW they would get false confessions.

In fact they PLANNED on getting false confessions.

Why?

Obviously we can't discuss "who is responsible for the 9-11 attacks" here .. but it's gotta he OBVIOUS by now that the Bush administration has gone to great lengths to cover up who is responsible.

Right?

I've searched in vain for the link, but I recall it was Addington, Cheney's Chief of Staff, who requested that the SERE techniques be used at Guantanamo.

The whole end game is to keep fanning the flames of America's enemies, so that we can keep fighting them and keep throwing no bid contracts to Halliburton. It's that simple.

Cheney is a beast. He doesn't give a rat's furry behind if America is safe, he only cares if he can make money by pretending to keep America safe. He wants to keep the conflicts going all over the world. Torture is a good way to keep the animosity going.

what's the point for this? The guy comes off (and not just now) as an attention whore. Any mildly rational person would agree that waterboarding is torture, it's not something new and has been documented (see Alfred McCoy's book "A question of torture"). So, this guy comes along and says "well, it IS torture, I HAVE tried it" like some type of authority. Unless he's doing it out of guilt for cheerleading what led to more than 4,000 US troop and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, I don't give a flying fuck what he says.

It was torture for Hitchens because there was no scotch in the water!

i am for putting bush, cheney, condi and all the rest of this
bastard administration in gitmo and WATERBOARDING them
daily until they fess up to all the crimes they committed
during the last 8 yrs.

it's only fair that they be treated the same respect
contempt they have shown to the entire American Citizens
and world.

[deleted--David, you know better than this. Don't advocate violence on this site--towards anybody.]

nyguy @ 4:

Why does anyone cares what Richards thinks? I mean, he is not a journalist or anything. Is it because he is an outspoken atheist?

Well, he's a well known writer, and is often seen on TV. If he's using his celebrity for a good cause; then good for him. Torture is wrong. It should not be supported. Do we really want to be known as a country that grabs people off the street, who are often innocent of any wrongdoing, shipping them away to secret prisons, and torturing them?

Think about the damage that's been done. Psychologically, physically, and to their lives in general.

Don't you think that some of those people have families? Imagine if someone with a wife and kids suddenly disappears for YEARS.
What do you think happens to that family?

Imagine if YOU, or a loved one just vanished one day? Think about the anguish you would feel.

What if years later you found out they were hidden away and tortured?

I also have to wonder about what kind of person would think that such actions are totally fine.

Didn't they used to execute people for such crimes? That's a rhetorical question. I know for a fact that they did.

Che's Lounge @ 69:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was boarded 100 times in 2 weeks.

The guy is scum and should, after a fair trial, probably be locked up (IMHO) for life. But this is not justice. After two sessions he probably told them anything they wanted to know. What did they possibly hope to gain with the other 98 attempts? Propaganda?

It just doesn't make any sense, unless they enjoyed doing it.

yes partly for enjoyment also revenge on the enemy and also to permanently break the mind of the victim.
Also its prob was done for training purposes of new TLA and contractors, plus desensitizes people so they will go do worse.
No matter how gungho people talk about 'go getting them' in training, they still need blooding with real pain and techniques on real victims.

FWIW, here's a link to the straight dope posting of someone who tried waterboarding to see what it was all about. His description of the psychological effect it had is even more chilling than Hitchens's...

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448717

P.D. @ 86:

This is sad. A man goes through this and he is attacked. What's going on?

He didn't go through squat P.D.
His own phobias were worse on him that that cup of water.
But as I said upthread, I give him credit for trying.

P.D. @ 86:

This is sad. A man goes through this and he is attacked. What's going on?

Easy to explain. We have sadists in our country. Lots of them.

We also have people in this country who are amoral, uncaring and greedy. They would gladly see people die if it satisfies their ideals.

They especially hate people who are different. In fact, they both fear AND hate them. If there are people in the world who are different from them lets them know that their worldview might not be the only one. That's something they can't tolerate. Their psyches are too fragile for that.

That's it, in a nutshell.