can we do it to Sean Hannity now????

Far be it for me to promote that book larnin', but perhaps Mancow could have learned the exact same thing by, I don't know, actually reading an account by waterboarding victims of the Khmer Rouge, or the North Koreans, or Japanese Imperial Forces, or the Inquisition, ad nauseum.

Oh, and whoever writes the subheadings? Mancow is ahead of you: it's not "simulated drowning," it's drowning.

"Arrested drowning," perhaps, but there's nothing "simulated" about it.

From DanP on the comment thread at Washington Monthly:

"Good. Now let's move past waterboarding. Which of these right wing celebrities wants to under go a regimen of sleep deprivation, slapping, slamming against the wall, just enough tasteless food for survival, stress positions and blaring "Born in the USA" for a few days. Until then, Cheney cannot thank Obama for withholding thousands of abuse photos while claiming EIT were only used on a few people."

I couldn't agree more.

So, before experiencing it himself, he actually thought it would be like going swimming? It's amazing sometimes how political biases can influence our perception of reality. It couldn't be bad, he apparently thinks, because my team is doing it.

Good on this guy for going through with it, though.

It's sad that you have to go so far as to torture someone for them to understand that, yeah, torture is gonna suck.

What is often left out of the discussion on waterboarding and other techniques which, while against the law, was the US policy for 2-3 years is this....

Pain is a very very subjective thing. I know. I've actually done a lot of pain studies myself (as a subject) and learned a lot about it. Fear is an enormous amplifier of pain and the psychological effects of pain. Let's remember that the detainees subjected to all of these techniques not only didn't know whether our intent was to give them "enhanced interrogation" or whether to ultimately maim or kill them -- none of them had any idea where they were, how long they were going to be there, no representation, no sense of whether people knew where they were or what was happening to them... In other words, they lived in a complete and total state of psychological limbo which is going to take whatever physical experience they suffer through and absolutely compound it into sheer agony that's going to last for years...

Last, while I am not reassured by Obama's inability to completely rule out ANY and all treatment/holding of detainees outside of the law, the key difference between the Obama regime and the Cheney/Bush years is that Obama is at least saying up front what it is he intends to do and why. He's holding it up to public scrutiny. That doesn't let him off the hook for anything his administration elects to do extraconstitutionally (and the jury's still out on that), but it gives US a much better shot at upholding OUR responsibilities to the Constitution and the rule of law and speaking out, protesting, questioning and shining a light wherever we possibly can.

You give me 15 minutes of Springsteen croaking "Born In The USA" and I'll sign anything you want!

I'm glad that he did this. All kinds of people, who know nothing, have been saying its not torture. Experts have consistently said waterboarding is torture, but in our culture expert opinion is no more valid than some random radio DJ. So I'm glad he did it, although it looked like he really suffered, so that he can convince some of his radio listeners that it really is torture. But, more generally, I'm really frustrated at the large majority of people who ignore experts on torture and just form their own opinions based on no evidence -- the same thing happens with global warming, supported by tons of evidence and virtually all scientists, which somehow can't convince many television personalities.

I guess I'm an expert now, too.

Why is there even a debate about this? Does anybody really think this isn't torture? And who believes that this is the worst the US has done?

The key phrase uttered in this video is this:

"I don't want to say this. I don't want to say this... but this is torture."

That says it all. When people come to their opinions based on an emotional and prejudicial need to see things a certain way, then they will not see whichever facts staring them in the face contradict their view. It's not that this guy was so dumb as to not consider that this experience would be pure torture for him... it's that he didn't want to see it that way!

This is how it is with the global warming deniers, the Christian right deniers of gay people's essential humanity ("it's a choice" against all evidence to the contrary) and so forth.

Why did we go to war in Iraq? Not because there was overwhelming evidence of a threat but because there was some questionable evidence, some calculated obfuscation but, more than anything, there was a majority of the populace who wanted to see a tangible threat that we could destroy. All it needed was for someone to package that into cloudy threat into something tangible and then funnel the rage and fear towards it. It would appease our vengeance and stifle our fear of the largely invisible threat that was not in Iraq.

Consequently, if you want to win a debate against someone uninterested in the facts, rolling out the truth will only go so far. What you need to do is counter the emotional basis of their argument with a truthful and genuine emotional basis of your stance.

All of which is to say that if Obama truly wants to counter the pro-torture arguments, then he has to put some passion into his rhetoric and point out, with a bit of righteousness, that what has been done is shameful, immoral and should be beneath this country. And then he needs to back that up with policies that unequivocally match that passion.

Bush and Cheney are fond of saying that you can't "reason" with the terrorists. Well, you can't reason with the fear-mongering right either.