Answer: You waterboard him.
In fact, that's exactly what happened on the May 22, 2009 edition of Matthew Erich "Mancow" Muller's nationally syndicated talk radio show, Mancow's Morning Madhouse.
"I want to find out if it's torture," Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture.
Unfortunately Mr. Muller, things didn't go quite the way he planned. After a mere 6 seconds, the manly Mancow ended his "enhanced interrogation" session...gasping, visibly shaking and unable (at first) to even articulate the experience. When he did finally get his act together, what do you think was Madcow's verdict. Is waterboarding "torture" or not?
"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke,"Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. "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.""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 but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.' "
Now, to give credit where credit is due, Mr. Muller (unlike many of his neo-conservative colleagues) was willing to put his convictions to the test, and when confronted with the stark reality of what he had previously referred to as "no big deal," immediately and completely retract his support for the use of this technique. Should this realization and reversal have required a flashy, rating's whore approach to convince Mr. Muller that torture--or even anything that approaches that term closely enough for there to a serious question about it--is fundamentally wrong and an unacceptable practice in any civilized society? No, it probably shouldn't. But, late is better than never, I suppose, and if this is what it takes to awaken the slumbering humanity that was lulled into its apparent repose while watching one too many late-night George Bush infomercials, so be it.
TTFN,
Blackout
"When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you." ~ African Proverb
I actually don't think I believe waterboarding is torture. I mean they do it to train SEALs. Now we shouldn't be doing it. Not that I care if terrorists are getting tortured but of course they are not all terrorists, they don't all have information, and it's against our Constitution, and we need to be an example. It's of course ridiculous to try to end this kind of thing while doing it. I might not even have a problem with sending them to somewhere like Turkey who will certainly do it and do it well, but we can't be doing it.
I actually don't think I believe waterboarding is torture.
That's what the Mancow thought, too...until someone waterboarded him. Navy Seals are waterboarded as part of their training on how to resist torture. It is a part of the military's SERE training. Let's ask a former SEAL who took that training and has been tortured if he thinks waterboarding is "torture"...(the torture question comes at approximately 2:15 of the video)...
TTFN,
Blackout
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Haha I love Jesse. I want him to run for president with Ron Paul. I also think they would make good comic book villains, with Paul being a short, elvish, ridiculously smart doctor, and Jesse being his "Body". But anyway, look, I'm unequivocally against us doing it. It's not American. I just feel that it's not quite right to call waterboarding torture with the other things that are called torture. I mean its certainly close enough that we shouldn't do it, and, I think I'm probably arguing semantics with you. I agree with your general point.
PAUL/VENTURA '12!!!
This event clearly demonstrates that, at least in the case of Mancow, it is not torture when it is applied to a hostile stranger, but quickly becomes so when it is applied to him.
A similarly hypocritical standard applies to the question of whether such torture (or enhanced interrogation if you prefer) is/was justified. Six years after the fact, with no successful attacks having penetrated the efforts of US security forces to safeguard this country, the moral high ground is safe for opposition politicians to exploit.
If the three high ranking terrorists that were actually waterboarded had been captured short months after 911 as they were, and the administration in power had vocally refused to question them except politely, and thousands of American lives were subsequently lost in an attack that might have been prevented (as is claimed by Cheney) by information those three possessed.....
....The same politicians that fault this torture would have been accusing their opponents of failing in their duty to protect the American people.
Why do you suppose the administration refused to release the details of information gained via these methods?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
It is my personal opinion that denying people chocolate is torture. We should make sure that all of our prisoners have chocolate. Freedom for the criminals!
Anyway, I hardly think that a man who's undergone drowning as a child is an objectional judge on waterboarding, considering the mental connections he will make while undergoing anything remotely similar.
Oh, and I find it beyond amazing that the same people who spout freedom from torture for spies and criminals also find it perfectly ok to murder children. Somehow, their logic fails.
PS...HI! I've missed you! :P
RESPECT LIFE
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"It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
...if any of the people our country tortured are criminals or not. Why? Because they weren't given trials. And, considering the general incompetence of the administration that captured them, I think it likely that at least some of these people are in fact innocent. How do you feel about waterboarding a suspect who turns out at trial (assuming that they ever get one) to be innocent?
Unfortunately for your counter-point of the drowning man, he isn't the only one who says that waterboarding is torture. Here's a source that you might find more convincing...
Oh, and I find it beyond amazing that the same people who spout freedom from torture for spies and criminals also find it perfectly ok to murder children. Somehow, their logic fails.
Your comment really doesn't make any sense, since no one here appears to be promoting the murder of children...oh, wait, I forgot....you're a pro-lifer who continues to throw out the pejorative and factually incorrect accusation that abortion=murder. Personally, what I find "beyond amazing" is how the "pro-life" movement continues to produce so many murderers themselves. For example...
George Tiller Killed: Abortion Doctor Shot At Church
This is actually the SECOND time that some crazed "pro-lifer" took a shot at Dr. Tiller. He survived being shot by one of these nut-bags back in 1993. And as usual, there is a significant chunk of the pro-life community that is all but cheering this REAL murder. For example...
Of course, there are a lot of pro-life organzations who have condemned the murder, but when reading those condemnations it sounds more like political lip-service than heart-felt horror at the crime. It also doesn't help your case when there are major players in the pro-life movement who say shit like this...
But back to the topic at hand. It is of course no surprise to me that you are in favor of torturing people, due to the fact that white evangelicals and catholics are by far the most likely demographic to support the torture of prisoners. At least, that's what the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found (LINK)...
With all that being said, I suppose its nice to see you back as well. At least now we'll have someone with a steady "moral" compass to tell us how we should be living our lives.
TTFN,
Blackout
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I'd like to direct you to the Mythbuster episode where they test Chinese Water Torture.
In case you don't know what Chinese Water Torture is, it's simply slowly dropping water on someone's forehead for an extended period of time.
Like waterboarding, it's not so much a physical form of torture (such as pulling the victim's fingernails off), but a much more psychological form. As such, it actually takes quite a bit less to cause torture, doesn't leave physical evidence (for the most part), and is, therefore, much harder for those who haven't experienced it to actually get a firm grasp of what it's actually like to undergo such torture methods.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
Although his view of it was affected by the fact that he almost drowned, who's to say some of the suspects we are using it on won't also have had that same fear? Or are afraid of drowning despite never having experienced it? No one's view is completely unbiased. Someone who has undergone it before, such as a SEAL is less likely to find it as unbearable.
As for your comment about pro-abortion? Bush's administration is the one that approved it. He also happens to be "pro-life." And even if he wasn't, the world is filled with hypocrisy.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
from Military.com, a discussion among service members:
http://military-entertainment.military.com/2009/05/is-waterboarding-tort...
"O, I'm sorry you took that, -I meant that for the Devil, and you have stepped in and taken the blow. Don't get between me and the Devil, brother, and the you won't get hurt." --Billy Hibbard