Mancow Muller, the right-wing Chicago talk-show host, thought that waterboarding is just a little fun. A joke. Why the hell would the CIA bother to use it then?
And so it went Friday morning when WLS radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller decided to subject himself to the controversial practice of waterboarding live on his show.
Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on -- actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.
"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.
With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.
Turns out the stunt wasn't so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.
"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.' " Last year, Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens endured the same experiment -- and came to a similar conclusion. The conservative writer said he found the treatment terrifying, and was haunted by it for months afterward. "Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture," Hitchens concluded in the article.
These right wingers actually believe the crap they say. Why would the US prosecute the Japanese back in WWII over their use of it on our people? Why would it take Bush and Cheney to get the OLC to write bogus memos to get around the legalities of torture? I'm against torture, but I can't do anything about stupidity. He couldn't last ten seconds. I say, bring it on and if you're stupid enough to declare that waterboarding is not torture, go for it. I just hope you don't have a heart attack.
