Well, if Mancow said it, it must be true!
posted at 12:17 am on May 23, 2009 by Laura
[ Double Standards ] printer-friendly
Mancow says waterboarding is torture. To prove it, he took ten minutes out of his life, lay on a table, and had a gallon of water poured onto his face while the person pouring the water helpfully held Mancow’s nose. See the whole gruesome ridiculous experiment here. My favorite part is when he sat up immediately afterward, complaining about how bad it was.
I won’t try to debate the legal definition of torture because I simply don’t care. If the law supposes that what was done to Mancow in that video is torture, then the law’s an ass.
Regardless of what the law says, unless you’re an aggressively stupid leftist determined to score some political points, this is what people think of when they think of torture: “whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.” By any rational standard, this is torture. How about being “starved, burned, cut and chained to a fireplace grate and in the garage. … given alcohol, pills and marijuana to keep him in a lethargic state.”
This isn’t about making a comparison, the way the chubby girl stands next to her morbidly obese classmate in order to make herself look thinner by comparison. Either you’re fat, or you’re not; after that’s determined it’s just a matter of degree. Waterboarding is torture, or it’s not. I say it’s not.
Without even trying, I can think of a dozen things worse than having a momentary drowning sensation in a tightly controlled situation. Being compelled to hear an audiobook of Maureen Dowd columns narrated by Susan Estrich, for one. Having an MRI. Viewing Pete’s Dragon cold sober. Root canals. Algebra class. Colonoscopy. A cross country road trip with your in-law’s. And don’t even get me started on the topic of childbirth. Every woman I know would gladly undergo 10 minutes of waterboarding to escape labor and delivery. Make your own “worse than waterboarding” suggestions in the comments.
My point is that just because something is scary, unpleasant and/or painful, even if deliberately administered, that doesn’t make it torture. If the treatment Mancow received is torture and thereby illegal, then every District Attorney in the country had better start tacking torture charges onto the list for every felon that crosses his path. Armed robbery? Assault and battery? Rape? I bet the victims felt out of control and in fear for their lives; charge each and every perp with torture. Hey, if the left deems those charges good enough for our government and our military, they should be considered good enough for your garden variety criminal. But if a victim was kidnapped and waterboarded in order to make them give up the combination to their safe, and the suspect was charged with torture, the ACLU would scream like a goth in the sun. It’s not torture, and they know it.
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it seems each and every conservative will have to be waterboarded until they recognize the obvious truth: if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
please come forward and subject yourselves one by one to show how crazy the “left” is. please try to last longer than mancow did and then start with your childish “worse than waterboarding” suggestions. until then, you’re loudmouth cowards.
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 7:40 AM
Oh, grow up. You try telling a rape victim that what she experienced isn’t torture, if waterboarding is torture.
Laura on May 23, 2009 at 7:43 AM
Leftists: Always willing to do to their own countrymen what they are unwilling to do to people who actually want to kill them.
eforhan on May 23, 2009 at 7:47 AM
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 7:40 AM
—-
Does not fly.
Listening to Mancow is torture. I’ve tried.
Torture is something that leaves its’ victims disabled. Ask the guys suing the Chicago PD over torture if they’d rather have been waterboarded. (google Burge Chicago PD)
Hell, even Hollywood got it right. Go watch the ‘Firefly’ episode “War Stories”. That’s torture.
Mew
acat on May 23, 2009 at 8:06 AM
Tell you what.. how about you and I both get waterboarded.. under the same conditions that KSM was.. whoever yields first.. loses.
BTW.. if it was really torture, would Mancow really volunteered to do so?
If there was a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ of torture that was being spun to decide my fate.. I would be hoping and praying that there would be a ‘Waterboarding’ wedge. Instead of beatings with rubber hoses, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, broken kneecaps, injected with narcotics, scorpions being dropped on you..
you know, REAL torture.
DaveC on May 23, 2009 at 8:24 AM
rape is akin to torture, and both are felonies as they should be. what’s your point?
did anyone but talk show hosts confirm that to you?
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 8:29 AM
Either it’s torture and sesquipedalian is advocating its use on his fellow countrymen, or it’s not torture. Which is it, sesquipedalian? If you believe it to be torture, why do you want it done to conservatives? And does that then make you “pro-torture?”
Sorry. You can’t have it both ways. Either you say it’s torture and you want it done to no one, or admit you are wrong.
eforhan on May 23, 2009 at 8:40 AM
i used to play water polo. let’s try something else, dave.
he did it to prove it was not torture. mancow is a conservative.
whatever you think “real torture” to be, waterboarding is that it’s sufficient to force people to make false confessions. that’s the real problem, not how much pain ksm felt.
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 8:48 AM
you really have no idea how normal police interrogations work.. do you?
DaveC on May 23, 2009 at 8:51 AM
So it wouldn’t be torture for you then..
interesting.
DaveC on May 23, 2009 at 8:53 AM
No, no, no. Not “akin.” How is rape materially different from waterboarding? Both sufferers are at the mercy of their captors, undergo an invasive procedure, are in fear for their lives, have potentially long-lasting psychological effects… All the things the left claims make waterboarding so horrifically bad can be used to describe a rape. So why can’t we now charge rapists with torture?
Laura on May 23, 2009 at 9:05 AM
Because he believes he is morally superior to you and I?
Hence.. what he says is and isn’t torture.
DaveC on May 23, 2009 at 9:16 AM
When is sesquipedalian either going to admit he is pro-torture or that waterboarding isn’t torture?
eforhan on May 23, 2009 at 10:43 AM
in some cases, you can. neither should be tolerated, but i still don’t get your point. i’m not advocating rape – you’re advocating something that, according to you, is not “materially different” from rape. aren’t you diminishing rape if you can list dozens of things much worse?
please correct me.
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 10:57 AM
After watching Mancow supposedly being tortured, the only thing that struck me was what a woos he is. The guy already had some sort of drowning phobia from childhood, so no wonder. I imagine if he had tried out for the waterpolo team in H.S. he’d be screaming torture as well.
If I had a choice between being waterboarded daily, or being thrown into a typical american jail cell with 350 lb. Bubba who intends to…errr…get intimate with me, I’d choose waterboarding everytime!
Vanbasten on May 23, 2009 at 2:08 PM
sesq – the truth is I think being raped is a hell of a lot worse than being waterboarded. While similar in the ways I suggested, rape is far more invasive and has the potential for lifelong repercussions like pregnancy and/or STDs. It also is often accompanied by other injuries.
Waterboarding, obviously, a minute later and you’re up and about. The left gets their knickers in a twist over being waterboarded, which has been done exactly 3 times by our government, and is done recreationally by shock jocks, pundits and youtubers, yet rape goes more or less unremarked.
If waterboarding is torture, then so is rape and so are a host of other crimes which also do to the victim all the same things the left claims waterboarding does – along with a ton of additional things. Let’s start charging people.
Am I diminishing rape? That’s certainly not my intention – on the contrary, I’m raising it up to the level of concern I think it deserves – FAR higher than waterboarding.
Laura on May 23, 2009 at 8:56 PM
whatever you think “real torture” to be, waterboarding is that it’s sufficient to force people to make false confessions. that’s the real problem, not how much pain ksm felt.
sesquipedalian on May 23, 2009 at 8:48 AM
—–
And do you know how intelligence gathering is done?
Real intelligence gathering is not single-sourced, he-said, or hunches.
Real intelligence gathering is about piecing data from multiple sources together, branching out from one link to another to discover entire networks.
What we did *NOT* have (thanks to Democrats past, Clinton, Church Commission, etc.) was much data from Jihadi groups.
In a way, you’re right – torture can lead to lies – but good intelligence gathering from an interrogation involves asking questions where we already know what the truth is as well as questions we don’t know the answers to, and ideally doing so in a way that the person being interrogated can’t tell the difference, so can’t figure out when to lie and when not to.
Please attempt to watch less TV and think more.
Mew
acat on May 23, 2009 at 10:35 PM
Mancow is starting a new weekly radio stunt: WOW, or Waterboard an Oaf Wednesday.
sesquipedalian can probably name some other form of “torture” that you can perform on somebody in public without being arrested.
Jim Treacher on May 24, 2009 at 12:39 AM
what is the difference between charging someone with rape or torture? either way they’ll end up in jail for a long time – and rapists also carry a lifelong stigma. rape and torture are prosecuted under different statutes, but the result is the same.
sesquipedalian on May 24, 2009 at 6:36 AM
so you have no problem with other countries torturing captured Americans, since it’s a necessary part of an effective intelligence gathering mechanism. all countries have the right to defend themselves from mortal threats afterall.
and what do you recommend these people do?
sesquipedalian on May 24, 2009 at 6:48 AM
I’d recommend they ask you why you suggest it’s necessary to waterboard millions of conservative Americans but not three foreigners who wanted to kill Americans.
eforhan on May 24, 2009 at 10:27 AM
Vanbasten on May 24, 2009 at 12:12 PM
Guess not.
Jim Treacher on May 24, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Oh, I don’t think rape has nearly the stigma that waterboarding has, to the left, at least. I have two words for you: Roman Polanski. I’d like to see some of that incredible moral outrage the left, particularly the Hollywood left, reserves for President Bush, applied to him. Just for starters.
As for being in jail “for a long time” are you kidding me? Murderers routinely get out in seven years or less. And I’m not suggesting we fail to charge rapists for rape. I’m suggesting we charge rapists – and plenty of other criminals – with whatever their crime is PLUS torture. Again, here is my point: IF waterboarding is torture, THEN rape and many other crimes also should easily qualify as torture.
Laura on May 24, 2009 at 1:26 PM
In the case that may happen, I doubt the International Red Cross will be down the hall.
nice to see you dodge the interrogation question..
Moral equivalency at it’s finest..
people jumped out of the twin towers while it was on fire but sesquipedalian gets his panties in a was if KSM has water splashed on his face..
DaveC on May 25, 2009 at 9:27 PM