[Winstonm]

Chicago radio personality Erich "Mancow" Muller volunteered to get waterboarded to "prove" that it wasn't torture:

Quote

"The average person can take this for 14 seconds," Marine Sergeant Clay South told his audience before he was waterboarded on air. "He's going to wiggle, he's going to scream, he's going to wish he never did this."

"Mancow," in fact, lasted just six or seven seconds before crying foul. Apparently, the experience went pretty badly -- "Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop," according to NBC Chicago.

Mancow was set on a 7-foot long table with his legs elevated and his feet tied.

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said. "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face...I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "

The upshot? "It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke," Mancow told listeners. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

"Absolutely. I mean that's drowning," he added later. "It is the feeling of drowning."

"If I knew it was gonna be this bad, I would not have done it," he said.

It must be tough to be right all the time - far right, that is.....

[jdonn]

I guess I don't understand the sarcasm. He tested it and admitted he was wrong. Wtp?

[Winstonm]

To me it just shows the disingenuous nature of the arguments made by the far right. Here we have right-wing talk show host admitting he was wrong about torture while Cheney goes on and on about not torturing and how this non-torture saved hundreds of thousands of lives - a claim with no substantiating proof whatsoever.

Besides, I thought it might be enlightening to those who still accept the Cheney/Bush claims that the U.S. did not torture to see what a right-wing supporter had to say about water-boarding.

[Phil]

I don't understand the neocons here.

If I made a living out of being a right wing talking head, I would be hoping that torture was effective (i.e., painful, embarrassing, quick) so that the prisoners would have something to say. Waterboarding was supposed to be a way to get prisoners to talk, not some 21st century version of flogging.

[blackshoe]

Torture is a Bad Thing™. The United States Government is Good™ and does not do Bad Things™. The United States Government did waterboard some people. Therefore, waterboarding is not torture. QED.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on May 24 2009, 03:37 PM, said:

~~ while Cheney goes on and on about not torturing and how this non-torture saved hundreds of thousands of lives ~~

i thought he more or less didn't care that it was (or was perceived to be) torture? my understanding is that he thought it was justified

[cherdanno]

luke warm, on May 24 2009, 06:48 PM, said:

Winstonm, on May 24 2009, 03:37 PM, said:

~~ while Cheney goes on and on about not torturing and how this non-torture saved hundreds of thousands of lives ~~

i thought he more or less didn't care that it was (or was perceived to be) torture? my understanding is that he thought it was justified

LOL. He has consistently denied that the Cheney administration has tortured.

[kenrexford]

I don't get this "waterboardoing -- big deal" line either. I mean, if you can get the three hardcore radicals you waterboarded to talk, it must have been damned impressive methods.

For that matter, though, I still don't get the big question that I have about all of this. Doesn't anyone get the whole idea to covert anymore? I mean, what, we have to make press statements about everything? Whatever happened to what I thought to be the good ole days of taking a small enough group of people (three works) where no one would know what is really happening, waterboard the F out of them, get the goods, but keep the whole thing secret?

No! We need to have press statements about capturing so-and-so! Rather than a well-timed disappearance, and plausible deniability, we have to splash the pictures all over.

[Fluffy]

What its a torture is to read water cooler with all these boing topics about the same thing.

[mtvesuvius]

Fluffy, on May 24 2009, 11:03 PM, said:

What its a torture is to read water cooler with all these boing topics about the same thing.

I'm strapped to my desk chair and drowning in torture threads.

[helene_t]

kenrexford, on May 25 2009, 01:13 AM, said:

waterboard the F out of them, get the goods, but keep the whole thing secret?

"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead"

( Gordon Liddy, who spent four years in prisson for his involment in the watergate scandal. But I think it originates to Benjamin Franklin).

[Fluffy]

mtvesuvius, on May 25 2009, 04:26 AM, said:

Fluffy, on May 24 2009, 11:03 PM, said:

What its a torture is to read water cooler with all these boing topics about the same thing.

I'm strapped to my desk chair and drowning in torture threads.

yeah yeah, right, sorry I made the wrong tone. I was more joking than complaining.

[Winstonm]

How about a thread on the evolution of torture, then?

[PassedOut]

A former FBI counter-terrorism agent believes that the Bush administration's reliance on torture instead of more effective interrogation techniques damaged US security: What Torture Never Told Us.

His first point is that the torture itself was useless:

Quote

Public bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

His second point is that replacing professional interrogators with torturers lost the information that would otherwise have been obtained:

Quote

It is surprising, as the eighth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that none of Al Qaeda’s top leadership is in our custody. One damaging consequence of the harsh interrogation program was that the expert interrogators whose skills were deemed unnecessary to the new methods were forced out.

Mr. Mohammed knew the location of most, if not all, of the members of Al Qaeda’s leadership council, and possibly of every covert cell around the world. One can only imagine who else we could have captured, or what attacks we might have disrupted, if Mr. Mohammed had been questioned by the experts who knew the most about him.

A lack of knowledge perhaps explains why so many false claims have been made about the program’s alleged successes. Many officials in Washington reading the reports didn’t know enough about Al Qaeda to know what information was already known and whether the detainees were telling all they knew. The inspector general’s report states that many operatives thought their superiors were inaccurately judging that detainees were withholding information. Such assessments, the operatives said, were “not always supported by an objective evaluation” but were “too heavily based, instead, on presumptions.” I can personally testify to this.

A former vice president of the US who repeatedly lied to the public about Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" is now lying again and again about the effectiveness of his torture program. My take is that, remembering this man's history, fewer of us are being taken in by his recent statements. But it's still helpful when people with a direct knowledge of the facts - like Agent Soufan - speak up:

Quote

Meanwhile, the professionals in the field are relieved that an ineffective, unreliable, unnecessary and destructive program — one that may have given Al Qaeda a second wind and damaged our country’s reputation — is finished.

Amen.

[Winstonm]

Quote

A former vice president of the US who repeatedly lied to the public about Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" is now lying again and again about the effectiveness of his torture program.

Gee, you mean that "unnamed reliable source" quoted by the Washington Post may be disingenuous? I am shocked, shocked, to hear that WaPo would publish unverified "fact-asy".

fact-asy (n.)
fantasy pronounced as fact by a publication, attributed to an unnamed reliable source.