Christopher Hitchens is a complex guy. He's 59-years-old. He's an old-school man of letters, a fierce and eloquent debater, a drunk, a heavy smoker and an first-rate intellectual: author, journalist, classicist, literary critic.
He calls himself a "radical" instead of liberal. A former "Trotskyist". His heros are George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. And he knows his world history like nobody's business. He's a political observer, an "anti-theist" who wrote the bestseller "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".
He describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason.
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I've read Christopher Hitchens and trust Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has always defended civilization against terrorists and totalitarian dictatorships (he was heavily influenced by Orwell). Hitchens supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Neocons never trusted Hitchens because he wrote scathingly about Ronald Reagan (their hero) and he refused to be associated with him.
Hitchens rejected the idea that waterboarding is "torture" (just as many conservatives do).
The magazine Vanity Fair asked him to be waterboarded (just as Keith Olbermann is asking Sean Hannity to be waterboarded) --- and here is his response.
Hitchens' hands were cuffed by professional handlers, he was hooded and spun around to disorient him, then...
From Vanity Fair:
"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it simulates the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowningor, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The board is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose...."
Believe Me, It's Torture | vanityfair.com
As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, Any time is a long time when youre breathing water. I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
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I will remember those words.
Waterboarding is not "simulated" drowning. You are drowning. Water is going down the throat and up the nose and you're drowning until the procedure is stopped.
Besides waterboarding being illegal, it is being proven to provide highly unreliable information. Enemy combatants simply say anything, anything, to make it stop.
Here is an NPR history of waterboarding:
Waterboarding: A Tortured History : NPR
He calls himself a "radical" instead of liberal. A former "Trotskyist". His heros are George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. And he knows his world history like nobody's business. He's a political observer, an "anti-theist" who wrote the bestseller "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".
He describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason.
--------------------
I've read Christopher Hitchens and trust Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has always defended civilization against terrorists and totalitarian dictatorships (he was heavily influenced by Orwell). Hitchens supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Neocons never trusted Hitchens because he wrote scathingly about Ronald Reagan (their hero) and he refused to be associated with him.
Hitchens rejected the idea that waterboarding is "torture" (just as many conservatives do).
The magazine Vanity Fair asked him to be waterboarded (just as Keith Olbermann is asking Sean Hannity to be waterboarded) --- and here is his response.
Hitchens' hands were cuffed by professional handlers, he was hooded and spun around to disorient him, then...
From Vanity Fair:
"You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it simulates the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowningor, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The board is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose...."
Believe Me, It's Torture | vanityfair.com
As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, Any time is a long time when youre breathing water. I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
--------------------
I will remember those words.
Waterboarding is not "simulated" drowning. You are drowning. Water is going down the throat and up the nose and you're drowning until the procedure is stopped.
Besides waterboarding being illegal, it is being proven to provide highly unreliable information. Enemy combatants simply say anything, anything, to make it stop.
Here is an NPR history of waterboarding:
Waterboarding: A Tortured History : NPR