I’m too lazy on an afternoon before a holiday weekend to check our archives for how many clips I’ve posted of private citizens voluntarily waterboarding themselves to prove how awful it is. Suffice it to say the number’s greater than three, which of course is the total number of terrorists waterboarded by the CIA. Like Hitchens, Mancow readily calls it torture, which must make this the first torture technique in history that can double as a shock-jock radio bit. Needless to say, the ethical question isn’t whether waterboarding is harrowing; every account of it that I’ve ever read says it is. The ethical question is whether it’s necessary and effective, harrowing or not, in drawing out life-saving info in an emergency situation. I’d have been interested in hearing Mancow’s opinion, post-boarding, on whether he’d still use the procedure if he thought it might avert a terrorist attack. I know which way I’d bet.