Torture Session: Christopher Hitchens On The Waterboard

http://www.facebook.com/ScienceReason ... Brutal Torture Session: Christopher Hitchens Getting Waterboarded.

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Christopher Hitchens On The Waterboard

"You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning — or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure."

How does it feel to be aggressively interrogated? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of Americas use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere.

Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded on video for an article about torture in Vanity Fair. Unlike real prisoners, Hitchens gets a safe word, and two "metal objects" that he can release when he wants the waterboarding to stop.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/fe...

Christopher Hitchens (born 1949) is an author, journalist and literary critic. Currently living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets. Hitchens is also a political observer, whose books — the latest being "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" — have made him a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits.

In 2009 Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in U.S. media." The same article noted, though, that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list" and that he "styles himself a radical", not a liberal.

• http://www.hitchensweb.com/
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  News & Politics

[ThePhantom135]

"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."

~Napoleon Bonaparte, letter to Louis Alexandre Berthier, 11 Nov 1798~

[danweed19]

And anybody, and i mean ANYBODY that says this is a wimpy form of torture, or its not that bad, try it on yourself, i DARE u. Theres no way you would last 5 seconds, and if u did, then u didnt do it right.

[KingdomOfDimensions]

No study has ever conclusively proved torture to be effective in attaining accurate information, a lack of scientific backing which alone means it should be discontinued completely. Even more damning is the large amount of evidence for the contrary; that torture engenders inaccurate answers. With no conclusive scientific evidence to support such a vile act, the cons greatly outweigh the pros.

[jlzumwalt1]

No one ever said doing the right thing was easy.

[RazZazStudios]

What you're saying is true, but sometimes it's difficult to maintain that stance when your opponent doesn't feel the same way.

[jlzumwalt1]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

An excerpt from the DoI. Notice that it says "men" not "americans" or "u.s. citizens". All men are created equal and have inalienable rights. Torture alienates rights of men.

[RazZazStudios]

I also found the Wikipedia article you cited and I think its rather amusing that the Japanese's use of torture may have led to their own surrender. How ironic. But anyway, there are no absolutes in anything and whichever method produces the least amount of false information (Because no misinformation is impossible) is the one I would be okay with using. And if torture itself is not one of those things, than so be it.

- Razputin

[RazZazStudios]

That's probably true. In a bizarre way, it's beneficial if the enemy uses it against our men because they are discarding their chances for gathering decisive intelligence to use against us and potentially getting misinformation. But I digress, I still think tortures effectiveness has to do ultimately with the form of it applied. I kind of consider interrogation techniques as a form of torture (albeit a mild version by comparison) such as sleep deprivation, the spicing of food, humiliation, etc.

[jlzumwalt1]

You're wrong in thinking that torture is a reliable way of getting information.

The US Army field manual on intelligence interrogation explains that "The use of torture is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."

[RazZazStudios]

(Pt2) I don't condone violence, but it seems like an unfortunate fact of life.

-Razputin

[RazZazStudios]

As fucked up as it sounds, I think torture is an effective way of extracting information out of an enemy whether he be a combatant or a non state actor. (Provided the form of torture doesn't produce tons of false confessions) I say this because no convention or International law can stop an opposing belligerent from using these techniques on your men. I don't know, I guess it appeals to my petty sense of 'revenge', like the Americans returning the favor to Germany for the Malmedy Massacre.

[KennyTew2]

Well said, it's scary what some of these monsters will accept.