Full Version: Hitchens is waterboarded
Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding
July 2, 2008 11:30 AM
Just in case the news that American torturers have been revealed to have taken their cues from that model of moral clarity that was the Chinese Communist regime hasn't fully convinced you that the practice is unquestionably, incontrovertibly evil, Christopher Hitchens' column in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, "Believe Me, It's Torture," ought to drive it home. That is, if the accompanying video, available online at Vanity Fair's website, doesn't do it first.
In the video, Christopher Hitchens is brought, hooded and bound, into an austere looking storage room, and placed on a board, slightly elevated at it's foot. He is instructed by the similarly masked interrogators on how to call a halt to the procedure, either through a safe word - "red" - or by releasing the "dead man's handle" - a metal object placed in each hand. A towel is placed over his face and one of the interrogators begins pouring water on Hitchens' face from an ordinary-looking milk carton. The interrogators demonstrate no more aggression that one might when watering a houseplant. In fact, the process looks so unremarkable that you begin to wonder if they aren't simply "warming Hitchens up" for something worse.
Seventeen seconds pass, and then Hitchens drops the dead man's handle. When the hood is removed, it is jarring to see how panic-stricken Hitchens looks.
In the video, Hitchens describes the experience:
They told me that when I activated the 'dead man's handle' - which is a simple process, you simply release something, let it go - I didn't do that. I practically, even though my hands were bound, I...as near as I could...I threw the thing out of my hand. I mean, I really wanted it to stop.
I could swear I shouted the code word, but I hadn't.
Everything completely goes on you when you're breathing water. You can't think about anything else.
It would be bad enough if you did have something. Suppose if they wanted to know where a relative of yours was...or a lover. You feel, "Well, I'm going to betray them now. Because this has to come to an end. I can't take this anymore." But what if you didn't have anything? What if you'd got the wrong guy? Then you would be in danger of losing your mind very quickly.
That last paragraph, I believe, is critical, especially considering the torture practices of the Chinese Communists - who we are now emulating - were designed to elicit false confessions from those who were tortured.
Attention should be paid to the aftermath of the experience as well, which Hitchens relates thusly:
As a result of this very brief experience, if I do anything that gets my heart rate up, and I'm breathing hard, panting, I have a slight panic sensation that I'm not going to be able to catch my breath again...lately I've been having this feeling of waking up feeling smothered, trying to push everything off my face.
It takes only seventeen seconds to ruin the life of an innocent man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/02/i...e_n_110444.html
QUOTE(Pegatha @ Jul 2 2008, 01:37 PM) 
Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding
July 2, 2008 11:30 AM
Just in case the news that American torturers have been revealed to have taken their cues from that model of moral clarity that was the Chinese Communist regime hasn't fully convinced you that the practice is unquestionably, incontrovertibly evil, Christopher Hitchens' column in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, "Believe Me, It's Torture," ought to drive it home. That is, if the accompanying video, available online at Vanity Fair's website, doesn't do it first.
In the video, Christopher Hitchens is brought, hooded and bound, into an austere looking storage room, and placed on a board, slightly elevated at it's foot. He is instructed by the similarly masked interrogators on how to call a halt to the procedure, either through a safe word - "red" - or by releasing the "dead man's handle" - a metal object placed in each hand. A towel is placed over his face and one of the interrogators begins pouring water on Hitchens' face from an ordinary-looking milk carton. The interrogators demonstrate no more aggression that one might when watering a houseplant. In fact, the process looks so unremarkable that you begin to wonder if they aren't simply "warming Hitchens up" for something worse.
Seventeen seconds pass, and then Hitchens drops the dead man's handle. When the hood is removed, it is jarring to see how panic-stricken Hitchens looks.
In the video, Hitchens describes the experience:
They told me that when I activated the 'dead man's handle' - which is a simple process, you simply release something, let it go - I didn't do that. I practically, even though my hands were bound, I...as near as I could...I threw the thing out of my hand. I mean, I really wanted it to stop.
I could swear I shouted the code word, but I hadn't.
Everything completely goes on you when you're breathing water. You can't think about anything else.
It would be bad enough if you did have something. Suppose if they wanted to know where a relative of yours was...or a lover. You feel, "Well, I'm going to betray them now. Because this has to come to an end. I can't take this anymore." But what if you didn't have anything? What if you'd got the wrong guy? Then you would be in danger of losing your mind very quickly.
That last paragraph, I believe, is critical, especially considering the torture practices of the Chinese Communists - who we are now emulating - were designed to elicit false confessions from those who were tortured.
Attention should be paid to the aftermath of the experience as well, which Hitchens relates thusly:
As a result of this very brief experience, if I do anything that gets my heart rate up, and I'm breathing hard, panting, I have a slight panic sensation that I'm not going to be able to catch my breath again...lately I've been having this feeling of waking up feeling smothered, trying to push everything off my face.
It takes only seventeen seconds to ruin the life of an innocent man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/02/i...e_n_110444.html
July 2, 2008 11:30 AM
Just in case the news that American torturers have been revealed to have taken their cues from that model of moral clarity that was the Chinese Communist regime hasn't fully convinced you that the practice is unquestionably, incontrovertibly evil, Christopher Hitchens' column in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, "Believe Me, It's Torture," ought to drive it home. That is, if the accompanying video, available online at Vanity Fair's website, doesn't do it first.
In the video, Christopher Hitchens is brought, hooded and bound, into an austere looking storage room, and placed on a board, slightly elevated at it's foot. He is instructed by the similarly masked interrogators on how to call a halt to the procedure, either through a safe word - "red" - or by releasing the "dead man's handle" - a metal object placed in each hand. A towel is placed over his face and one of the interrogators begins pouring water on Hitchens' face from an ordinary-looking milk carton. The interrogators demonstrate no more aggression that one might when watering a houseplant. In fact, the process looks so unremarkable that you begin to wonder if they aren't simply "warming Hitchens up" for something worse.
Seventeen seconds pass, and then Hitchens drops the dead man's handle. When the hood is removed, it is jarring to see how panic-stricken Hitchens looks.
In the video, Hitchens describes the experience:
They told me that when I activated the 'dead man's handle' - which is a simple process, you simply release something, let it go - I didn't do that. I practically, even though my hands were bound, I...as near as I could...I threw the thing out of my hand. I mean, I really wanted it to stop.
I could swear I shouted the code word, but I hadn't.
Everything completely goes on you when you're breathing water. You can't think about anything else.
It would be bad enough if you did have something. Suppose if they wanted to know where a relative of yours was...or a lover. You feel, "Well, I'm going to betray them now. Because this has to come to an end. I can't take this anymore." But what if you didn't have anything? What if you'd got the wrong guy? Then you would be in danger of losing your mind very quickly.
That last paragraph, I believe, is critical, especially considering the torture practices of the Chinese Communists - who we are now emulating - were designed to elicit false confessions from those who were tortured.
Attention should be paid to the aftermath of the experience as well, which Hitchens relates thusly:
As a result of this very brief experience, if I do anything that gets my heart rate up, and I'm breathing hard, panting, I have a slight panic sensation that I'm not going to be able to catch my breath again...lately I've been having this feeling of waking up feeling smothered, trying to push everything off my face.
It takes only seventeen seconds to ruin the life of an innocent man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/02/i...e_n_110444.html
We have a US General telling us that the executive branch is full of war criminals, for which he has proof. And now Pro-war Hitchens is telling us the obvious truth that waterboarding is torture.
And we keep on going, like a nation that watches people get hit by cars and and watch mentally ill people fall over dead and do nothing.
What does it take to get some outrage?
QUOTE(real_democrat @ Jul 2 2008, 09:33 PM)
We have a US General telling us that the executive branch is full of war criminals, for which he has proof. And now Pro-war Hitchens is telling us the obvious truth that waterboarding is torture.
And we keep on going, like a nation that watches people get hit by cars and and watch mentally ill people fall over dead and do nothing.
What does it take to get some outrage?
And we keep on going, like a nation that watches people get hit by cars and and watch mentally ill people fall over dead and do nothing.
What does it take to get some outrage?
Is mass outrage required to bring significant change in a humanitarian constitutional democracy?
Does the US have a humanitarian constitutional democracy? Do most citizens want a humanitarian
constitutional democracy? Can democracy and merritocracy coexist and positively reinforce each other in human social systems? Just wondering.
NEWS FLASH
ALTERNATIVE TO WATERBOARD FOUND AND IS MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE.
It's been discovered within each case of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) there is a a meal described as the "Veggie Burger". All commands henceforth will quit using the "Veggie Burger" MRE as a means of punishment for grades E-3 and below and forward said MRE to Guantaunomo Bay Cuba. A week of eating the "Veggie Burger" MRE for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and even the most ardent and hardened terrorist will spill his guts about everything.
ALTERNATIVE TO WATERBOARD FOUND AND IS MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE.
It's been discovered within each case of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) there is a a meal described as the "Veggie Burger". All commands henceforth will quit using the "Veggie Burger" MRE as a means of punishment for grades E-3 and below and forward said MRE to Guantaunomo Bay Cuba. A week of eating the "Veggie Burger" MRE for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and even the most ardent and hardened terrorist will spill his guts about everything.
WOULD figure you would try to make a joke about a serious thread
that is a job for you san'
that is a job for you san'
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