Is waterboarding “torture”? One right-wing radio host in Chicago insisted it isn’t, and was willing to back up his stand by getting waterboarded himself – with hilarious results.
As shown in this video, Erich “Mancow” Muller – after predicting he could tolerate the procedure for as long as a minute – comes up gasping and spluttering after exactly five seconds.
“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow says afterwards. “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. … If I knew it was gonna be this bad, I would not have done it.”
And Mancow, unlike the typical waterboarding victim, had the procedure performed by a friendly Marine sergeant with reporters, cameras and paramedics on hand.
Okay, we know there’s no local angle to this, but it’s so damn funny we couldn’t resist passing it along. Anybody want to make a guess as to how long Dick Cheney would last?
(TOH to Kari Chisholm at Blue Oregon for spotting this.)
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.
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So the Source sees fit to convey selective credibility upon this guy when he refers to this as torture. I’m sure he was a right wing lunatic when he was calling out the original liberal messiah Dean 5 years ago.
By the way, I bet if Muller had any secret knowledge of terrorists or terrorist organizations he would have been spilling it at about the 6 second mark.
“I’ll bet Dick Cheney would last a lot longer than Nancy Pelosi!”
What the hell, let’s strap ’em both to side-by-side waterboards and see who hollers uncle first.
But I don’t think Five-Deferment Dick would get anywhere near a waterboard.
“I bet if Muller had any secret knowledge of terrorists or terrorist organizations he would have been spilling it at about the 6 second mark.”
And even if he didn’t have any knowledge he’d be spilling it anyway. That’s one problem with torture — it elicits unreliable information. People under torture will tell their torturers whatever they think they want to hear.
There’s growing evidence, BTW, that the Bush administration used torture not to prevent terrorist attacks but to build its phony case for its phony Iraq war.
I love it. The messiah declares waterboarding to be torture so now the debate is oficially closed?? Not quite.
Torture is cutting peoples fingers and toes off. Torture is burning people with hot things. True torture was inflicted upon John McCain. True torture was inflicted upon William Buckley. One was lucky to survive, the other did not make it. Waterboarding may be extremely unpleasant, and no I don’t want to subject myself to it. But it causes no permanent damage.
Get a grip.
“And even if he didn’t have any knowledge he’d be spilling it anyway. That’s one problem with torture — it elicits unreliable information. People under torture will tell their torturers whatever they think they want to hear.”
This mindset is an insult to the intelligence, competence, and professionalism of of this nation’s interrogators, intelligence agents, and military men and women.
Our forces don’t go out and round up anybody who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent, waterboard them, and when they declare, “Abdul did it!”, decide conclusively that Abdul did it. Do you actually think the U.S. counter terrorism effort is that shallow?
The folks who undergo intense interrogations are already suspected of having knowledge of plans, people, and places. Any information they may or may not provide is corroborated with other testimony, bounced off of link diagrams, checked and cross checked. To think that these hardened, America hating murderers are going to just tell what they know in exchange for a koran, three halal meals a day, and a pretty please is naive at best and irresponsibly dangerous at worst.
Grow up and show a little appreciation for the people who have kept this country safe for the last 8 years, even if our president won’t.
JJ–
Didn’t McCain declare water-boarding torture? Didn’t the US government declare water boarding torture after the Korean conflict? Is death from drowning or cardiac arrest ‘permanent’ damage or collateral damage?
‘Waterboarding prevented a 911 type attack on Los Angeles that saved potentially thousands of lives.’
I, for one, would be very much interested in reading a factual, unbiased, transparent analysis of the KSM revelations under torture and their success but everything I read is so heavily tainted–Right Wing sources automatically defend the torture as justifiable
and the only way to save lives–Left Wing says we can’t sink to their level and maybe we could get the intel by making nice–that all discussion is suspect.
KSM was water boarded six times a day for a month–how is that not torture? If he divulged the plot, why was it continued? Did he start to provide the CIA with anything he thought they wanted to know, and if so, doesn’t that confirm what the critics of torture claim?
People who have been tortured say water boarding is just that–torture. People who ‘try’ it immediately call it what it is after they fold in seconds–torture. Our country called it torture until its leadership thought it might be an ‘expedient’ way to make up for its intelligence agencies’ intel failures. After all, any results are better than no results.
This is not a movie or television drama–it is the real world. Torture leads to more torture–justifies more aggressive techniques. If water boarding doesn’t work, is cutting off fingers and toes justified? Should the Spanish Inquisition replace the Geneva Convention?
Do the ends justify the means? If that is what the promoters of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ are advocating, then the Constitution they claim to want to protect is not worth the parchment it is written on.
Jon: Do you have any personal experience conducting interrogations, or does your knowledge come from watching “24”?
“Grow up and show a little appreciation for the people who have kept this country safe for the last 8 years”
I’m not at all convinced that anything Commander Codpiece and Five-Deferment Dick did “kept this country safe.” Eight years elapsed between the first terrorist attack on the WTC in 1993 and the big one in 2001. But I never hear right-wingers giving Bill Clinton credit for “keeping the country safe” during those eight years; all we hear is how Clinton somehow was to blame for 9/11 — even though it happened on Bush and Cheney’s watch and THEY ignored warnings that it was coming. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
At least Clinton caught the perps behind the 1993 attack and put them behind bars. Bush and Cheney let bin Laden get away after a lot of tough talking about bringing him back “dead or alive.”
“Kept us safe” my ass. If they’d been doing their jobs they might have kept us safe on 9/11/01.
I wish everyone who contends that waterboarding isn’t torture could be waterboarded. And I don’t mean the pansy way Mancow was waterboarded. Strap them down, naked and do the full treatment, while screaming at them in a language they don’t understand.
They’d change their minds in an instant.
HBM: I’ve never watched an episode of 24, but I do understand the intelligence process. Funny you mention that though because throughout this whole thread I was wondering if your experience with the process came from the interrogation scene in Toy Story with Sid and Woody.
Try to see through your liberal hate-Bush rage to see that nowhere in my provious post do I directly credit Bush and Cheney with our record of success in counter terrorism. My praise is for the U.S. Intelligence Community for the thankless job they do out of view of you and me on a daily basis.
As for “Five-Deferment Dick”. Pretty bold name calling considering the left has produced Oxford attendee Bill Clinton, self admitted war criminal John Kerry, injury faking Howard Dean, and our current president who seems to be in lock step with his spouse who is ashamed of America. we could keep going on on both sides of this all day. Some are courageous enough to step up and serve and some are not.
“But I never hear right-wingers giving Bill Clinton credit for “keeping the country safe”
Putting Yousef behind bars was great. But WTC 1 was not purely a law enforcement issue. Yousef was al-Qaeda and merely a satellite of the main problem. In 1996, bin Laden declares war upon the United States. In 1998, our embassies are hit. In 2000, the U.S.S. Cole is hit. In 2000, Clinton has a chance to take bin Laden out, he declines. Through it all Clinton does nothing. He was too busy cultivating his legacy, his public image, and trying to prevent being removed from office for lying under oath.