This video is from 2008, when Hitch decided to undergo water-boarding to determine if it was torture.
You may perhaps remember that in 2009, Sean Hannity said that HE was willing to be water-boarded for charity, but despite an offer from Keith Olbermann to pay $1,000.00 a minute to his named charity if he went through with it, Hannity simply did not have the guts.
"For every second you last, a thousand dollars -- live or on tape, provided other networks' cameras are there. A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth -- waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."
After seeing how quickly Hitch succumbed to panic during his waterboarding, imagine how it must have felt for the so-called "Mastermind of 9-11," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to undergo that same process 183 times.
Somehow I think he would have admitted to just about anything.
Why would the 9-11 Mastermind undergo it more than once then? 187 times? It's a very curious argument for and against torture to get results.
ReplyDeleteAnd wasn't Hitchens one of the guys responsible for the MSM rallying behind the Bush Administration to go to war in Afghanistan and especially Iraq?
I remember when he did that. I watched and I admired him so much for that. I also loved his stark honesty. Check out the interview with Anderson Cooper that he did when he was first diagnosed with cancer.
ReplyDeleteIt's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgCq2T-v-Mo
I'm an atheist, too, and although I thought he was a little too aggressive, I always thought he seemed like a good person. I particularly like that he admits that his smoking and drinking put him at risk for cancer. Not a lot of people have the guts to do that.
What he says about Christians praying for him in this video is great, too. I'm going to miss him.
Thank you for reminding people that Hitch was principled. If only the Bush administration's waterboarding advocates had been forced to try it before declaring it "not torture."
ReplyDeleteDidn't Newt circa 1995 master the rewording technique that was employed by the criminal Bush
ReplyDeleteadministration to either make something sound more palatable by changing the term and/or the definition?
That's when TORTURE became the kinder and gentler "enhanced interrogation." Dehumanizing the enemy came next and then the third (and final step) is justification "Well, it might be torture, but it was necessary because the intel we achieved from it saved countless lives."
There are people to this day who claim that the water boarding provided valuable intel, when it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it yielded no such thing.
I may not have always agreed with Hitchens but
he was trying to show people that waterboarding
is undeniably torture, unlike that coward Hannity
who claimed it wasn't torture, but still couldn't
get up the balls to prove it.
Sarah would confess to the fake birth in less than two seconds of waterboarding.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember, did he believe it was not torture? Was he on the fence and just wasn't sure whether or not it was torture?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad he did this. Since he was an advocate for the war, I believe it carried more weight when he had it done to him, and he came out and said, "It's torture."
I would love to read the Vanity Fair article where he talks about it.
Like most GOP pukes, Sean Hannity is a weak, spineless tool! I miss Hitch already. His was a singular voice that shone the light of truth, as harsh as it is, into virtually every corner of our world.
ReplyDeleteWe are better for having known him!
I was just sick when I learned the Bush administration had decided that torturing prisoners was acceptable. Of course there is ONE thing torture is effective for, and that is obtaining false confessions.
ReplyDeleteI vehemently disagreed with Hitchens on his unflagging support of the Iraq war, but accord him great respect for having the courage to be waterboarded to prove his point, then to admit that he was very much wrong. I would note that the only two conservatives who were actually willing to be waterboarded to prove that it was not torture decided within seconds that it actually IS torture. Erich "Mancow" Muller lasted about 4 seconds.
ReplyDeleteHannity is still a sniveling little wussy shit for ignoring Olbermann's bet. Hannity wouldn't last as long as Muller.
MissSunshine,
Torture is also good for something else: allowing us to debase ourselves by surrendering our beliefs, our dignity, and our respect for the rights and dignity of others, and our faith in the Constitution. Torture is great for doing all those things.
Oops. The Anon post at 9:35 was me. I don't know how I did that without signing my moniker.
ReplyDelete"Hannity is still a sniveling little wussy shit"
ReplyDeleteSo true, Gasman.
@Anon4:08. Hitch wasn't always right but he was always truthful.
As someone who got asthma as an adult, one of the first things you have to learn to deal with when you have a total tracheal or bronchial spasm and can neither in inhale nor exhale, is the instantaneous blind panic.
ReplyDeleteThe panic is a lower brain response to not being able to breath, your life is being seriously threatened just like it would be if a huge lion suddenly lunged at you unexpectedly.
But the panic only makes the spasm worse. So you have to learn, not so much, to not panic, that is unavoidable, but how to work around or through it to do the things that can help you begin to inhale and exhale again, then hopefully the lower brain will begin a somewhat normal breathing pattern on its on.
I admire this mans courage and willingness to back it up with his convictions. What bothers me most about this whole issue, it if the same thing is done to an American Citizen, we're the first to staunchly defend the Geneva Convention rights afforded to prisoners of war. Not calling them prisoners, but enemy combatantants is just semantics to get around the law.
ReplyDeleteSean, "Pretty boy" Hannity couldn't stand the rigors of using a neti pot, let alone a second of waterboarding.