Chris Hitchens underwent waterboarding and wrote about it for Vanity Fair, leaving aside the fact that he’s stealing ideas from Scylla, it’s a very interesting read.
Everyone stay tuned for my even bigger exclusive- Getting Sodomized by a Goat, Believe Me, It’s Torture!
Next up: Hitchens has red hot pincers tear at his scrotum to prove his thesis that the atheists, Jews, blasphemers, Protestants and accused witches in the Inquisition weren’t just being whiney little bitches as commonly believed.
I never saw what the big deal about Scylla’s thread was. Already old news. I saw some guy do it on Current TV at least a year or more before Scylla and at least two years before Hitchens… Some ex-military Dude. He was basically showing that it was torture.
Here’s the video… the Guys name is Kaj Larson and he is being waterboarded by contracted professionals.
Are we going to see a new fad here? Celebrities “taking the plunge” and waterboarding? Angelina Jolie? Tom Clooney? For $2500, you too can experience a real waterboarding session - you even get a commemorative T-shirt.
I’m hoping it becomes an attraction at state and county fairs.
I’ve lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where a news anchor/reporter volunteers to be tased. Apparently there’s still some uncertainty about whether or not it hurts.
The “serious” news media long ago merged with tabloids and “The Onion,” and now apparently with “Jackass” and carnival geek shows as well. We truly live in a Golden Age.
If so, there’s a Colorado state senator I’d like to see waterboarded. This numbnuts made some comments during the past session to the effect that waterboarding isn’t torture and, even if it was, it’s OK to use on terrorists. I called him on it with all kinds of citations; he adamantly refused to admit that waterboarding is torture.
Perhaps if they’d added some 20 year old Scotch to the water Hitchens wouldn’t have thought it was so bad.
I’m seeing Reality Show. The contestant is on a massage table and connected to a lie detector. Answer questions truthfully, you get hot stones and good rubbing from scantily clad models of your gender of choosing. Answer wrong, it gets angled and sooner later the “bad models” dressed as “Dick Cheney’s Lesbian Daughter Dancers” come out with Saran Wrap while host Donny Osmond turns on the hose. Donny then sings a song, and if you can still insist you’re telling the truth by the time it’s finished (while being water boarded the whole time) you can still win the Prius.
It should be a game show about refusing to answer questions like, “How old are you?” The longer you hold out, the more money. Also, the method of torture should multiplying factor for the payout. The scale ranges from rubber hoses beating you across the back, to running electrical current through your testicles, to having red hot pokers shoved up your ass.
I dunno, man, I think Mr. Hitchens was only planning to have it done once.
I have to give Hitchens credit for some degree of openmindedness and for putting his money where his mouth is, and also for usually being interesting even when he’s just being contrarian and wrong. I do get a little flabbergasted when people say waterboarding isn’t torture, though. I mean, you can call it something else, like “enhanced interrogation” - or “unicorn snuggling” - but that doesn’t actually change what waterboarding is.
Hitchens is well acquainted with having mass quantities of liquids poured down his throat, so I have to discount this episode.
OTOH, it really doesn’t demonstrate much of anything if you simply validate by experience what you already believe – that it’s torture.
I would like to see people like Rush or O’Reilly waterboarded. Um, I’m actually guessing they would be the type who deny it’s torture, because I don’t actually watch their shows.
Come to think of it, I don’t especially care if they change their tune afterward. I would just like to see them waterboarded. Period. 
True, but we’re dealing with subjective things like pain, fear, distress and torture - their scientific effects on British journalists aren’t the issue. (Am I giving you any ideas for next year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest, by the way?) The thing that matters, to the degree this matters at all, is that you can come up with some logical and legalistic reasons that this isn’t torture, but once you’ve had the experience it’s pretty clear what waterboarding is.
Exactly why some torture deniers should have the experience. Was Hitchens one of those? I dunno, but my assumption was he wasn’t.
As for Bulwer, the deadline for this year has passed – they should be announcing the results by the end of this month. Next year, I hope to be one of the judges.