Conservative radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller has been one of the loudest voices denying that waterboading is torture. Like Sean Hannity (who said that he would allow himself to be waterboarded), Muller volunteered for a session to prove the point. Unlike Hannity, Muller fulfilled his commitment. As shown on the video below, in a few seconds, Muller went through the full range of Kübler-Ross of torture from denial to acceptance.
Mancow quickly learning what various courts have found for many decades: waterboarding is torture:
“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke. 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. 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.'”
For the video, click here.
For the story, click here
Over the last few weeks, I have listened to several political analyists talk about whether waterboarding is torture, whether it is effective, etc. The numbers don’t lie. They tell an irrefutable story.
The republicans want to repeat, as some sort of defense(?), that only three people were waterboarded. One of those people was waterboarded over 80 times and another over 180 times. Don’t those numbers alone show that waterboarding DOES NOT WORK? That seems obvious to me.
Also, there have been other numbers I have heard repeated lately that are disturbing on another level.
I have heard that 1 in 7 detainees who have been released have returned to “battle”. That number is shockingly low! When I think of a terrorist, right or wrong, I think of someone who is extremely dedicated to their cause. If all these people were really guilty of terrorist activities, wouldn’t that number be higher?
That says to me that a great number of people who were held as detainees were most likely NOT terrorists! Why is no one else saying this?
Cherry
You wrote: We are going to get hit and hit hard not very far down the road. I can’t wait to listen to your could have’s, should have’s, it’s our fault, how come the dots weren’t connected, why didn’t they get the information, blah blah blah at that time!!!
You know I hear that alot and it kind of makes me wonder whether you and people like you include in your nightly prayers to the god/s of your choice that we do get attacked just so that you can gloat that you were right all along.
As they say, beware of what you ask for and take care to avoid public buildings. I’d also avoid big cities. If the bomb drops, it might just drop on you which would make your point highly, well, inconvenient.
Should have been ‘I see this…” above- This is about the third time the first few words of my posting(s) have been cut off; my software maybe?
his as a bad sign; not only do we keep our hands ‘clean’ re; torture we get our info filtered by governments with their own agenda. That assumes that the government’s referenced do torture and our people aren’t present. I’m wondering what the chance of that are?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/24intel.html?_r=1&hp
Matthew N and CCD,
While I agree with both of you, I prefer to also emphasize that torture doesn’t work as if torture is wrong and doesn’t work then there is absolutely no argument that we should torture (i.e. commit war crimes with no benefit and substantial cost to both our morals and our security).
Yeah, CCD, it is so disappointing that more people don’t recognize this view. Cheney and company have already won by shifting the debate from right/wrong to torture works vs. torture doesn’t work. 🙁
“Whether torture works or not is completely and 100% irrelevant.” –
Matthew N.
Agreed and ninety days ago JT made that point. But maybe Mancow’s actions influence Hannity to experience the same. Further persuading the authoritarian masses that bought into BushCo fear about torture, that we are America…. Atta boy Shep Smith.
Whether torture works or not is completely and 100% irrelevant. It is immoral, illegal, and it goes against everything our country was founded on.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
Does this sound familiar?
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
What about this?
Yes, these terrorists are not US citizens, but as a society that values the fundamental worth of a human being (whether that human being is a fine upstanding citizen or a rapist, murderer, or terrorist) we must respect the human rights of all persons. Torture is wrong. It not only strips away basic rights from the people being tortured, but it also dehumanizes and warps the person performing the cruelty.
People can argue back and forth about whether or not it works for all of eternity, but the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter at all. To quote Fox News anchor Sheppard Smith: “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it works, we are America and we do not fucking torture!”
“The people that think torture doesn’t work are basing their belief on what someone else has told them…and not from personal experience. If you want to believe what someone else tells you; feel free to do so. However, don’t expect those of us who don’t rely on “cached thought” to join in your belief.” Jim Byrne
Matthew Alexander was on the job in Iraq. He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.
Jim Byrne authoritarians such as yourself come in all hues, sizes and shapes. I don’t care if you were a CIA contractor that personally tortured people in our name, which I doubt you were. Torture is ineffective, and I’ll take Retired Air Force Officer Alexanders personal experiences over your twisted perversion of the facts every time.
And by the way, how does Mancow’s prior experience with drowning in any way invalidate his conversion to a belief that waterboarding is torture? In my opinion, it only strengthens his case as he knows what actual drowning feels like.
Cherry,
Abu-Zubydah, gave us important information BEFORE we tortured him, shut up AFTER we started torturing him and after a couple of rounds of this was so broken that he was totally compromised as a source of intelligence. It is much more likely that we will be able to prevent the next attack if we don’t torture people instead of turning our backs on what makes America great. General Washington told our troops to treat our prisoners in such a way as to give them no cause to complain – as opposed to the standard treatment of British prisoners at the time, was he wrong? Dick the war criminal has lead this country down a dark, immoral path due to the mental illness he suffered as the result of remorse and fear after the 9/11 attacks. It is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions made worse by people like you to refuse to admit the errors that he has made.
Jim Byrne,
If by “torture works” you mean that anyone will break under torture or that it is an excellent means of extracting false confessions then you are absolutely correct, but if you mean that it is an effective means of interrogation, then you couldn’t be more wrong. People will say anything to stop torture (Mancow said as much after his waterboarding experience), so what if (hypothetically) the CIA at the behest of the Vice President (let’s call him Dick the war criminal) was torturing a Iraqi POW in order to try and establish a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda. If the POW knew that was the information his interrogators were looking for, don’t you think that he would confirm that in order to stop the torture rather than tell the truth? These methods were developed to extract false confessions, not information and I base that on the testimony of interrogators and people who have been waterboarded (including Mancow and military personnel who have gone through SERE). Standard interrogation techniques such as rapport building are much quicker, more effective, and more reliable than torture according to the experts (I have not heard one interrogator say that torture works, but I have heard several say it does not). Torture is both immoral and ineffective and both are sufficient reasons why it should not be used – by denying the latter you are playing into the hands of the torture apologists with their specious “ticking time bomb” scenarios.
The rest of the story:
Mancow drowned when he was a child and had to be pulled out and revived. Watch the last 10 seconds when Mancow vividly recalls how it felt just as he did when he was a child and drowned.
Three guys with information that saved Americans needed to be convinced to tell us what they knew. If it was YOUR son or wife that would be the next terrorist victim, your demeanor on this would change instantaneous and YOU KNOW IT!
We are going to get hit and hit hard not very far down the road. I can’t wait to listen to your could have’s, should have’s, it’s our fault, how come the dots weren’t connected, why didn’t they get the information, blah blah blah at that time!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9TzGGsVt60
and the rest of the story IS Mancow drowned when he was a child and had to be pulled out and revived. Watch the last 10 seconds when Mancow vividly recalls how it felt just as he did when he was a child and drowned.
Three guys with information that saved Americans needed to be convinced to tell us what they knew. If it was YOUR son or wife that would be the next terrorist victim, your demeanor on this would change instantaneous and YOU KNOW IT!
We are going to get hit and hit hard not very far down the road. I can’t wait to listen to your could have’s, should have’s, it’s our fault, how come the dots weren’t connected, why didn’t they get the information, blah blah blah at that time!!!
terible!
Of course waterboarding is torture.
So is twisting your arm behind your back. What? You don’t think so? Let me twist a little further. How about now?
Now the big surprise; torture works. It is, and will continue to be an effective means of extracting information. Is it perfect? -No.
The people that think torture doesn’t work are basing their belief on what someone else has told them…and not from personal experience. If you want to believe what someone else tells you; feel free to do so. However, don’t expect those of us who don’t rely on “cached thought” to join in your belief.
—Torture does work, but the use of torture should never be sanctioned by our government. That’s not to say that an individual would never use torture to extract information…it just means our government should not condone such.
Waterboarding a conservative talkshow host, heh? Now we’re making some progress.
Cindy
Unless you agree with Boss Limbaugh, Cheney, Hannity, etal., you can’t call yourself a right winger. They won’t allow it. If you don’t agree with the right wing about torture you’re just another run-of-the-mill Republican to them and it is they who run your party and it is they who want you OUT. You’re either with them or against them. Welcome into the light!
some of us “right-wingers” have thought it was torture all along, and some of us never even liked Bush…*gasp*
Just another right-winger that has lost his way. He is out, lost his bona fide, un-ditto-headed, a RINO!
Water boarding isn’t torture because Bush/Cheney/Cheney say it isn’t, drawing the line here because they know what they have done is far worse, committed with depraved indifference.
I guess, if he says that it was “Torture” and he knew that it would stop when he asked for it to stop this is a good start. I guess the “detainee” don’t have that option? I wonder if he had died in the experiment. Would you anyone have been charged? Nah, probably not, he did consent.
I wonder if Dick would stand up or in this case “lie” down for such an intrusion a violation of his rights or would it be like a day in the life of Dick and this is a mere ride at an amusement park?
I can see the headline: Cheney, believes that waterboarding is fun, a ride of there life?