Someone waterboard Elisabeth Hasselbeck next, please!

I found it interesting how reluctant he was to saying it was torture. As if he would rather stick to his “conservative” values rather than speak what he knew was the truth. I am guessing he would say waterboarding is not torture if this moment wasn’t captured on video and the radio. Footage of him freaking out is irrefutable.

threatening suspected terrorists with the deaths of their family members (and even following thorough on such threats) may get information out of them, it may even get good information out of them, but it is immoral. it is a slippery slope, friends.  let us also not forget that none of these people are convicted of any crime. do we trust our government enough (liberal or conservative, republican or demorat) to tell us who the bad guys are without a trial?  not i.

We’re talking about terrorists and suspected terrorists here. We should be willing to trash our moral, ethical, and legal codes and values, our moral and foreign policy credibility, and—yes!—even our very humanity for a chance to squeeze some information out of them. When we’re done (assuming we ever run out of suspicious foreigners who might know something that we’d like to know), we can just go back in time, dust off all that goody-goody lib baggage we jettisoned when it became inconvenient, and pick up right where we left off. I mean, that IS how it’s going to work, right? We’ll just change our values up a bit and become craven, brutal, inhuman, revenge-seeking, vicious outlaw thugs like our enemies—but only long enough to destroy them, then we’ll renounce The Dark Side and have our Light Side benefits and credits reinstated and everyone will honor and respect and trust us again? Right? /sarcasm I’ve suspected for quite some time now that the reason the hard-right fringe has no problem at all with an “ends justify the means” approach to torture is because they don’t stand to lose anything. When you’re already morally, ethically, legally, and politically bankrupt, how could you possibly care about retaining a shred of dignity and your own humanity by seeking peace the only way it will ever be attained—through justice?

Looks like it works well.
No physical damage.
Just enough mental trauma to motivate them even more when we let them out of gitmo.

amazing what experience and knowledge (aka expertise) can do to someone’s opinion - suddenly it becomes informed. funny how that works.

I think the question as to whether or not Waterboarding is torture is largely irrelevant. The important questions are:
Does it work?
If so, should we allow our intelligence professionals the option to use such a technique where exigent circumstances are present? Legally speaking, we are under no obligation NOT to torture in places such as Guantanamo Bay or other off-shore “Secret CIA Prisons.” The self-avowed terrorists in question are explicitly NOT protected by the Geneva Accords, because (among other reasons) they do not wear a uniform and make great efforts to blend in with the true innocents. Should these individuals be brought into U.S. territory, it would be at that point that certain Constitutional rights would have to be conferred upon them. But until then (again, legally speaking) they are fair game. From a moral standpoint, I would find it inexcusable to not do everything within my power to prevent even one innocent life from being lost… and if that means waterboarding a man who has bragged about his involvement in previous attacks and mockingly boasts of his knowledge of future attacks, then so be it.

What was being done to prisoners like Abu Zubaydah was much worse than this, obviously. A prisoner would be shackled at the ankles and wrists, with another strap or ropes across the chest tied down tight enough that getting a full breath would be difficult regardless of the wet rag over the face. Also prisoners couldn’t just drop a toy cow and end it; the whole bucket got poured on them no matter how much they struggled. And they didn’t have the comfort of knowing an EMT was standing there should anything go wrong.

wtf, can he not hold his breath for more than 4 seconds?

Yes, I give him some credit for actually going through with it too. But not a lot of credit because if you’re going to mouth off about what is and isn’t torture, and what “we” ought to be doing to the bad guys, and then try to whip people into a frenzy with your assertions while implying that what you do is a public service provided in the interest of justice, freedom, and the rule of law—then really, don’t you have an OBLIGATION to know what the hell you are talking about from the very beginning??????? When grown men and women toss aside their concern for actual or potential human rights abuses committed by the United States, just so they can stick their chests out and play a caricature of the flag-waving red-blooded every(wo)man, they willfully confuse true patriotism with simple-minded revenge lust and one-dimensional thinking borne of carefully cultivated ignorance, or the appearance of such. It’s despicable and deplorable. And “Mancow” is nought but a small-time sideshow clown compared to the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for either of them to give Sergeant South another chance to practice his technique. As perhaps the two most cowardly, dishonest men in the U.S. broadcasting business, they wouldn’t dare subject themselves to the truth without having some mechanism for denying it. And true to form, their aggressively stupid fan base will never notice or care. They are all convinced that the problem lies with everyone outside of the extreme right-wing fringe they occupy. Their thinking and their actions would be stunningly hilarious if they weren’t so tragic, pathetic, immoral, and unethical.

I think it’s sad this guy had to experience it to understand that it’s torture. Even in a controlled environment, with people he knows, he still couldn’t handle it. Waterboarding makes you believe you’re drowning. Last time I checked, drowning=death. Making somebody think they’re about to die, over and over again, is torture. At least this guy finally figured it out. Now maybe Dick Cheney needs to be waterboarded, so he can understand why he himself should be in prison for green lighting illegal torture of war prisoners.

I don’t like this trend of showing the public exactly how to torture [without leaving evidence] people. How many kids were kids are hurt trying wrestling moves?

You know what else is torture? Ironing boarding! Thank god for wrinkle-free.

I have to give him credit for going through it, unlike other punk-ass talking heads who deny what was commonly known as water-torture before Frank Luntz, is actually torture. Can we water-torture, er.. board, Luntz? Please?

Hmm.. I would have to try this myself. I bet I could last longer.