'IT IS WAY WORSE THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE'...I absolutely LOVE this move by Keith Olbermann last night. Now its going to be hard for Sean Hannity to shake the appearance that he is much more of a coward than Erich "Mancow" Muller, a guy he competes with for radio audience share. I don't think it will motivate Hannity to finally actually submit to waterboarding, we can still hope though can't we, but I do believe that it will make some of his listeners and viewers look at him with a lot more skepticism.
I'm generally inclined to ignore publicity stunts, but this one might serve a greater goal.Chicago radio talk-show host Erich Muller, aka "Mancow," apparently decided he'd subject himself to waterboarding. His admitted goal, which Mancow conceded on the air, was to prove that waterboarding was not, in fact, torture.
This morning, Mancow, who is nationally syndicated, went into a storage room next to his radio studio. The results were predictable.
"The average person can take this for 14 seconds," Marine Sergeant Clay South answered, adding, "He's going to wiggle, he's going to scream, he's going to wish he never did this."
With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.
Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. 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. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.
"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 [by his listening audience] but I really thought, 'I'm going to laugh this off.'"
He didn't. In fact, he explained afterwards, "It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke." (Christopher Hitchens had a similar reaction last year.)
I mention this, not to give a radio host more publicity, but because it's common to hear torture apologists insist that waterboarding is "no big deal." This is not only absurd, it defies common sense: if this wasn't torture, we wouldn't have done it. The whole point is to do something so horrific that the detainee would feel compelled to give up information. If it were merely a "splash in the face," as some on the right have argued, why would Bush administration officials think it might be effective?
What's more, also note the circumstances/context here. Mancow was in a familiar setting; he knew his life was not being threatened; and he know he could stop the procedure at any time. Despite all of this, he still recognized this as torture, despite wanting to prove the opposite.
- John Cole adds:
A couple points:
1.) I’m not sure why we have to keep waterboarding wingnut radio hosts to prove that torture is in fact torture, but this is just starting to get silly. How many times have we now waterboarded someone like this to prove what we have known all along- that waterboarding is torture.
2.) One of the things that supposedly separates humans from other animals is that we are able to learn from the experiences of other people. Apparently this ability is not available to right-wing radio hosts.
3.) Not to diminish Mancow’s experience, but if he thought that was torture, think what the real deal must be like. You are snatched out of nowhere, flown across the world, kept awake for days on end in a freezing room with little food, woken every time you fall asleep on your metal bed, thrown against the wall with that lovely procedure known as collaring, slapped, had dogs threatening you, yelled at and beaten, and so on and so forth. That goes on for a couple weeks to soften you up, then you are dragged by multiple burly men and waterboarded repeatedly. You have no dead man’s switch like Hitchens did, you have no “safe” word to stop the process, there are no cameras and friends there to make sure you are alright. These people have been abusing you non-stop for days or weeks, for all you know this is when they finally kill you.
Of course it is torture. I’m sick and tired of having this stupid damned debate.
- Josh Marshall adds:
The upshot is that the guy goes into it in cocky Hannity mode and then after maybe 5 or 6 seconds he struggles up and he's converted, claiming it's "absolutely torture", that he never realized it was that bad, etc.
Now, here's the thing. I'm genuinely surprised that he was was surprised that it was that bad. I'm not saying that for effect. Muller really seemed to think it was like getting dunked by your friend in a pool or something. Just factually, everyone who knows anything about this says that it's horrific and you pretty much instantly feel like you're drowning and at the edge of death. And it's a physiological response. So even if you've gone through it ten times and know rationally that you don't die, it doesn't matter. You're instantly put back into the mental space of drowning and being at the edge of death.
I must confess that when I see Hannity or the rest of these guys saying it's no big deal and it's not torture, I kind of figured they're playing semantic games and essentially saying 'I don't care what we do to evil Muslim terrorist bad guys.' Hang them from them toes, waterboard them, whatever, who cares? I don't agree with that. It's hideous. But I understand it. But here it turns out they're just completely ignorant, just haven't been paying attention. Just in the purest factual sense have no idea what they're talking about.
I know, I know ... why am I surprised?
This is really funny. May also be pretty accurate.
Jonathan Bynes: The 83 Waterboardings of Abu Zubaydah
The following is a transcript of notes taken at the interrogation of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. It was released by the C.I.A. at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the president.
1. Ha! Is this waterboard supposed to scare me? You think I don’t know that you are constrained by U.S. and international law from ever actually …
2. Hey! What the [redacted]?!
3. No, seriously. What the [redacted]?!
4. You’re Americans! Who do you think you are? Us?
5. You can’t do this! Show me the authorization for you to do this!
6. Wow. O.K., technically, you can do this. Although the quality of the legal work in these memos is shoddy at …
7. Enough! I beg of you! Stop the torture!
8. O.K., fine. Then stop the “enhanced technique!”
9. Please! For the love of God, I can’t take any more of this harsh treatment which does not rise to the level of torture!
...
50. A finger? Why is the bald guy holding up a …
51. One finger … one finger … First word! First word! Three syllables!
52. Two syllables! Sorry—my vision is a little blurry. First syllable … frown! Frowning!
53. Angry?
...
64. Prosciutto?
65. Ham! Ham! Sounds like ham! Sad Ham! Sad ham?
66. SADDAM! Saddam Hussein! It’s Saddam Hussein! So what about him?
67. O.K. … nine fingers. Ten fingers.
68. Eleven! Nine. Eleven … Twenty?
69. Wait. I got it! Nine-eleven! You want me to implicate Saddam Hussein in the attacks of 9/11? But that’s ridiculous. Osama and Saddam never so much as …
70. You know, now that you mention it, I think I may remember a telegram …
...
80. Nuclear weapons? You expect anyone to believe …
81. But Saddam didn’t have any …
82. … nuclear weapons to terrorists who intended to use them to destroy a major American city and were saved by the brave actions of your American president, George Bush! We good?
83. Bastards.
Appel: A Game Of Torture Telephone
Spencer Ackerman fisks Cheney:[There] is a straight line between the the CIA interrogation program at Abu Ghraib, moving like a game of telephone. At each stage, an important safeguard or restriction assumed at an earlier stage — the techniques apply only to the CIA; the techniques are to be used only on Geneva-exempted enemy combatants; the techniques are to be applied only by interrogators — breaks down. Not once do you have to assume that the Bush administration’s principals wanted abuse to happen to reach this conclusion. This is why the law exists, after all: to prevent unintended consequences by well-meaning individuals that veer off into horror. Redefining the law on torture leads to what a 2004 Pentagon investigation called the “migration” of so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques — even if that investigation didn’t have any mandate for discovering that the origins of those techniques came from CIA programs approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Benen: GROUNDHOG DAY...
On Tuesday, "The Daily Show" ran a good segment on why the right's arguments about Guantanamo Bay don't make any sense. If it seemed familiar, it's probably because the same show ran a very similar segment in January.
The problem isn't that the show is repetitious; the problem is the ridiculous debate is stuck in neutral, and the discourse is just spinning its wheels. Jon Stewart's commentary was just as applicable now as it was four months ago because the debate hasn't made any progress.
Indeed, we keep having the same arguments. The right will ask, "Is waterboarding really torture?" The rest of us will calmly explain the situation, point to the law, the science, and the history, and explain why it's torture. The right will respond, "OK, but is waterboarding really torture?" Months go by, and conservatives keep asking the same question, learning the answer, and then asking the same question again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This week, we kept hearing that torture prevented terrorist attacks. We know there's no evidence to support that, conservatives know we know that, but the right keeps saying it anyway.
Twice in the last two weeks -- including during his speaking duel with President Obama on Thursday -- [Dick] Cheney has said that the Bush administration's approach may have saved "hundreds of thousands" of lives. [...]
[T]errorism experts said that though it is possible to envision scenarios that involve casualties of that magnitude, no evidence has emerged about the plots disrupted during the Bush administration to suggest that Cheney's claim is true.
This article appeared in the LA Times today, but it could have run a month ago. Or five months ago. Or a year ago.
Policy debates aren't supposed to work this way. One side makes a dubious claim, and their rivals respond. If the claim is debunked, the first side moves onto new claims. The right refuses to play by these rules -- they make bogus arguments, they fail, and then they repeat the exact same arguments again. It's like the entire conservative movement is suffering from a short-term memory problem. That, or they assume Americans are idiots, and repeating lies improves the likelihood we'll believe them.
Just yesterday, over the span of a few hours, we heard Republicans argue that torture prevented an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles; torture didn't improve terrorist recruiting; and detainees only provided information after they'd been tortured. We know all of these claims are completely wrong, but more importantly, we've known this for a very long time.
As a movie, "Groundhog Day" was occasionally difficult to watch. As a national security debate, it's just painful.
Benen: THE ETERNAL DEBATE....
For years now, many of us have pondered the question: conservative Republicans don't actually believe their arguments, do they? Publius considers this in the context of the hopelessly bizarre debate over the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The right is probably lying, hoping to exploit the politics of fear, but what if conservatives have come to accept their own nonsense?
[T]here's actually one thing even more disturbing than Republican dishonesty -- the possibility that they are sincerely afraid of transferring the detainees. Some critics are clearly lying -- no argument there. But it may well be that other Republicans are sincerely worried that the detainees' evilness cannot be contained by any prison, or that they will brainwash their hapless prisonmates. [...]
[W]hat's truly disturbing is that a sizeable chunk of the public still fears that the Gitmo detainees are so dangerous that they could break out and destroy towns in America with laser beams from their eyes. Some of the detainees are, of course, very bad and dangerous people. But the idea that America is so very fragile and helpless in the face of these overpowering evil forces that we can't transfer the detainees to another prison (or give them real trials) is absurd.
So let's hope the GOP really is lying on this one.
That would be more comforting. Blatant dishonesty for partisan gain is much easier to understand than rampant stupidity among leading federal lawmakers.
It's hard to say with any certainty, and there's no doubt some variety within the group -- some liars and some fools -- but for what it's worth, there's ample evidence to support the "blatant dishonesty for partisan gain" theory. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Republicans see the debate over Gitmo as "the culmination of a carefully developed GOP strategy," which they hope to use as "the beginning of a political comeback."
The goal, apparently, was to identify a "favorable issue" on which the party could go on the offensive; "tarnish" Democratic leaders; and attack until the criticisms "begin to seem counterproductive."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) concluded more than a year ago that Mr. Obama might be vulnerable on Guantanamo -- and the unease voters would have over the prospect of transferring suspected terrorists to U.S. soil. Since April 20 he has delivered 17 floor speeches on the issue. Mr. McConnell beat back party dissent over his strategy, as some argued it was a losing battle when the president enjoyed such high poll numbers.
The attacks, in other words, are largely a cynical ploy, predicated on Republican hopes that public fear will outweigh public reason, and that most Americans won't realize how spectacularly dishonest the whole argument is.
That beats widespread stupidity, I suppose.
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