# Conservative radio hosts gets waterboarded **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 22, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343 "2009-05-22T22:19:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/101 "2009-05-23T20:28:48Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I started out talking about torture and the hypocisy involved in liberals cheering the prospect of it when Republicans/conservatives are the target rather than mere murdering terrorists. Out of pure curiosity, can we get a list of all the people known or suspected to have been waterboarded either by Americans or at their behest so we can estimate up just how many people they have killed through terrorism? Further, if it’s okay to waterboard a murdering terrorist, can we get lists of people convicted as such and find out how many times they were waterboarded? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/102 "2009-05-23T20:29:41Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > Oh, just shut up about Clinton. _sigh_ It’s not about Clinton, it’s about _hypocrisy_! Clinton is merely a well-known and irrefutable vehicle with which to illustrate it. So is Hillary and Barack’s stand on SSM, but people for some reason seem to keep ignoring mention of that. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/103 "2009-05-23T20:35:15Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > It’s not about Clinton, it’s about _hypocrisy_! Clinton is merely a well-known and irrefutable vehicle with which to illustrate it. Are the stakes of the issue at all relevant? If I claim to be on a diet but sneak out to buy a donut, is my hypocrisy to be viewed as comparable to someone who claims to be fighting for social justice but is actually dressing up as a clown and murdering hitchhikers? I’d just like to know if charges of hypocrisy mean anything anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/104 "2009-05-23T20:35:34Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Out of pure curiosity, can we get a list of all the people known or suspected to have been waterboarded either by Americans or at their behest so we can estimate up just how many people they have killed through terrorism? > > Further, if it’s okay to waterboard a murdering terrorist, can we get lists of people convicted as such and find out how many times they were waterboarded? I’m afraid I’ll have to address this another time as tacos await, but it’s probably worth mentioning that I have no say when it comes to any kind of list compilation. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/105 "2009-05-23T20:39:29Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > …washed down with a couple bottles of ice-cold beer…before I return. Watch out. Cheney had been drinking beer when he shot his friend in the face. And he _liked_ the guy. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/106 "2009-05-23T20:43:13Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I’m kind of surprised that people think the “waterboarding isn’t torture” argument is even remotely logical. Of course it’s torture…otherwise there’d be no point in doing it and making gradiose speeches for keeping it around. The fact it was used by the Spanish Inquisition should be proof enough it was torture. …And the Japanese in WW2…and the Gestapo…and the Khmer Rouge. But apparently, when the US does it, it suddenly becomes NOT Torture. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/107 "2009-05-23T20:53:00Z")
So let me check if I get SA’s stance. Clinton was terrible to women. Which he wasn’t by the way, he never was found to have done anything but consensual shenanigans. So on the face of it, the first leg of SA’s argument is based on conservative echo-chamber lies. Since Clinton was bad to women (which he wasn’t) and Liberals who champion women’s causes didn’t hate Clinton they are hypocrites. That’s a pretty fucking stupid argument right there. Implicit in the argument is the idea that being “terrible to women” (which he wasn’t) is as bad maneuvering the most powerful nation in the world into a vanity war that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent people and instituting the torturing of our captives like some fucking banana republic. SA, your argument is stupid. It’s only making you seem shrill and irrational. \*\* Ontopic:\*\* has anyone found anyone that’s been waterboarded who thinks it’s not torture. I’m sure there is some meat-head who’s been in the service who in a fit of macho partisanship has said so, I just would like to read it. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/108 "2009-05-23T20:59:36Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > _sigh_ > > It’s not about Clinton, it’s about _hypocrisy_! Clinton is merely a well-known and irrefutable vehicle with which to illustrate it. > > So is Hillary and Barack’s stand on SSM, but people for some reason seem to keep ignoring mention of that. 😉 They have been mentioned, many many times, in other threads (old ones but they did happen). I’m not going to glorify Clinton, but that wasn’t the subject of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/109 "2009-05-23T21:01:04Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Watch out. Cheney had been drinking beer when he shot his friend in the face. And he _liked_ the guy. 🙂 I don’t drink beer with my tacos. I want that space to be filled by… MOAR TACOZ!!!1111 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/110 "2009-05-23T21:17:46Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > _sigh_ > > It’s not about Clinton, it’s about _hypocrisy_! Clinton is merely a well-known and irrefutable vehicle with which to illustrate it. > > So is Hillary and Barack’s stand on SSM, but people for some reason seem to keep ignoring mention of that. 😉 No, this thread is about _torture_. Stop claiming that it’s about whatever you want to complain about, because your repeated hijacks are extremely fucking annoying. Oh, and by the way, people have been engaging in _hyperbole_ when wishing that Cheney be waterboarded, and a lot of people who were tortured have yet to be charged, so legally they are not murderin’ terrists at all. But please, by all means, don’t let the facts get in the way of your many, many diatribes about LIBRUL HPOCRUSY!!!1!1! ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/111 "2009-05-23T21:30:38Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > **Starving Artist** , stop changing the subject. This thread was _supposed_ to be about torture. Nobody wants to listen to you yammer about EVUL LIBRULS for the 85th time. Well, listen to him beating that dead horse feels like tor…uh, enhanced infliction of non-fatal punishment sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/112 "2009-05-23T21:45:48Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > _sigh_ > > It’s not about Clinton, it’s about _hypocrisy_! Clinton is merely a well-known and irrefutable vehicle with which to illustrate it. There are some noteworthy differences between Clinton’s treatment of women (and the reaction to it) and the Bush Administration’s treatment of detainees (and the reaction to it). But leaving those things aside, so what? So what if there’s hypocrisy on the left? I could list a few issues where the right’s deeds fall well short of their rhetoric. So what? Right now we’re talking about waterboarding. You can disqualify all the talk from self-serving, narrow-minded people of all political persuasions, but the issue still remains. Erich Muller has a more intimate knowlege of waterboarding, and more reason to defend the practice, than just about anybody here. He says it’s torture. What do you say? It disturbs me, too, that people who condemn waterboarding speak with some relish of applying it to its advocates. I said something similar in the Hannity thread a few weeks ago. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/113 "2009-05-23T22:53:22Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > It disturbs me, too, that people who condemn waterboarding speak with some relish of applying it to its advocates. I said something similar in the Hannity thread a few weeks ago. The thing is, I _don’t_ want Cheney, or anyone else, for that matter, to be waterboarded. I don’t think anyone in this thread really wants that- because we believe waterboarding to be torture, and civilized people don’t torture. However, I do want Cheney to admit that it’s torture, and therefore wrong. If it takes a waterboardin’ for him to admit that, then I’m all for him going through the process so that he can learn for himself that it is, in fact, torture. If Cheney (or Hannity, or whomever) wants to prove it’s not torture, all he has to do is go through with it and then say afterwards, “Meh, no big deal.” If he’s unwilling to do that, then he’s a hypocrite for claiming that it’s not a big deal. _Again, I don’t want anyone to be waterboarded_. I would be much happier if nobody ever again had to be tortured. **Starving Artist** is, once again, ignoring the hypocrites in his own party, in favor of trying to paint everyone else with that brush. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/114 "2009-05-23T23:01:09Z")
I doubt you’d find that Cheney, or Yoo, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Bybee, or the rest of the lot truly believe it isn’t torture. The justification is that it was needed to protect us from the Terrists. Never mind that most of what Cheney has said about it is not in accordance with fact. What we’re hearing from Cheney looks a helluva lot more like a PR campaign to deter criminal prosecution, and potentially soften history’s verdict. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/115 "2009-05-23T23:05:48Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > What we’re hearing from Cheney looks a helluva lot more like a PR campaign to deter criminal prosecution, and potentially soften history’s verdict. [Morbo]HISTORY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY![/Morbo] And yes, it does have to be in all caps, stupid board software. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/116 "2009-05-23T23:09:42Z")
I guess I’m not seeing the point of all of this. Okay, fine; let’s waterboard Hannity, Mancow, Cheney, et al and watch them cave after 4 seconds and cry like little girls. Great. So what did we accomplish? I know of nobody who says that waterboarding is fun or that a real man can handle it. It is obviously a very uncomfortable procedure or it wouldn’t work in interrogations. The question at hand is asking if waterboarding is SO bad as to be considered torture and therefore not something we should use to illicit information on Al-Qaeda terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/117 "2009-05-23T23:14:41Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > It isn’t about deflection and it most certainly isn’t about Clinton’s penis. It’s about hypocrisy, double-standards and the fact that a certain political ideology in this country which has held itself for decades to be more evolved, enlightened and progressive than its opponents is in reality no different and no better, it just exists at the opposite end of the political scale. Well, I am glad to finally see an admission from you that the Right Wing is nothing more than a counterweight to the Left Wing with no better claim to marality, enlightenment, or sense. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/118 "2009-05-23T23:15:37Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > [Morbo]HISTORY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY![/Morbo] Depends on the time scale, for one thing. For another, historians interpret the past in the framework of their own perceptions and values, even when they try to shake free of them. Those keep changing, too. Anyway, it’s worth a try. **jtgain** , the fact that the questions is even active as to whether or not waterboarding is even torture, a represents a major victory for the cabal. That question was settled in law long ago, during the post-WW2 war crimes trials. The fact that it is seriously being discussed by some as to whether or not torture is even \*illegal \*is another such victory. Even they knew it is - that’s what the memos were for. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/119 "2009-05-23T23:17:26Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I know of nobody who says that waterboarding is fun or that a real man can handle it. It is obviously a very uncomfortable procedure or it wouldn’t work in interrogations. The question at hand is asking if waterboarding is SO bad as to be considered torture and therefore not something we should use to illicit information on Al-Qaeda terrorists. And every single person who has ever done it or experienced it says that it’s torture. This is not an actual question. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2009, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343/120 "2009-05-23T23:18:27Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > So you have a little time to masturbate yourselves over evil Republican torturers and pretend you’re better than they before I return. This, however, is pretty close to violating a [longstanding rule in this forum](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4749265#post4749265) and I expect you to refrain from repeating that violation. [/Moderating] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-radio-hosts-gets-waterboarded/497343.md?page=7)