Who are you going to believe, gossip media sites or your lying eyes?
That’s the question syndicated Kansas City radio export Erich Mancow Muller asks in reference to the Web site Gawker’s insinuation that he may have faked his recent on-air waterboarding experiment.
“I mean, we had 50 cameras there, it was real,” Mancow says. “Nobody’s giving any credit to Gawker and nor am I.”
With apologies to a certain local media Web site infamous for falsely “reporting” deaths and other unsubstantiated and/or usually unverified rumors, the Cow says he did indeed take the waterboarding hit.
“There’s no straightening of it out at all,” he says. “I mean, the definition of waterboarding is you hold your head back and somebody pours water over your face. They’re saying, ‘Well, you weren’t in chains’ and all that. But we had to tell everybody up front that we weren’t going to do it because of the insurance companies. That’s how you always do stuff in radio; you ask forgiveness, not permission.”
Mancow’s waterboarding received widespread media coverage, in part because, like conservative commentator Sean Hannity, he did not consider waterboarding to be a form of torture. Until that is, he succumbed to it after only six seconds.
Ptolemy
Hearne, you need to get your facts straight. Hannity claims waterboarding is not torture NOT because it isn’t painful or frightening. He claims it is not torture because he defines torture as infliction of permanent and debilitating pain and suffering for no other reason than to enjoy establishing dominance over the prisoner. Mancow did what he did for superfluous reasons. Of course waterboarding is painful, frightening, and most-importantly, effective. That’s why it has been successfully used to prevent further attacks on American interests.
You need to get this site a political writer so you can stop getting slapped over the nose with a wet Platte County Landmark (the only paper-paper worth having).
HoneyBaked
The definition of torture does not require the “infliction of permanent and debilitating pain and suffering for no other reason than to enjoy establishing dominance over the prisoner” — the simple act of inflicting pain for punishment, revenge or to obtain information satisfies the definition… so Hannity can try to redefine the word all he wants, but the simple fact is that, by definition, water boarding = torture.
Further, your country (and mine) is currently party to treaties where the water boarding of prisoners is expressly forbidden.
So, not only did we break the law by definition… but we also broke it because we did it when we said we wouldn’t.
Ptolemy
You can define it however you wish to. So can Hannity. So can I. You’re not going to gain information in times of war by denying these guys frosting on their cupcakes. Wake up and greet the world in real time or you are going to lead to a major attack that we won’t walk away from.
ManDshagger
So it’s OK for President Obama to have Marine Snipers kill three pirates to save one US Citizen but we can’t “waterboard” a terrorist who might have info about a plot that could kill thousands. Jack Bauer needs to run the CIA/NSC/FBI.
HoneyBaked
Ptolemy, I didn’t define it “however I wish”, as your are inferring. I simply looked up the word in the dictionary. Try it. Google is at your fingertips.
Further, we are a nation of laws — and according to our laws and the treaties we are a party to, torture is illegal.
There is no gray area on this. You rob a bank, you’ve broken the law. You torture, you’ve broken the law.
You may not like it. You may be ok with waterboarding a baby for all I know… but your ability to not give a shit about it matters not.
Further, just because you support lazy (and arguably counter-productive) techniques, like torture, suggests to me that you are happy to trade your freedoms for the illusion of security. That is a trade-off I’m unwilling to make.
And ManDshagger, Jack Bauer is a fictional character on a television show. “Fictional” means that it isn’t real. Just an fyi for ya.
Ptolemy
Geneva does not require compliance when the enemy operates are Islamic terrorists do, fighting in the shadows under no country’s flag or uniform.
Killing is against the law. Killing in war is not. Waterboarding prisoners to obtain information on future attacks in a time of war is not against the law.
rick
this is awesome
HoneyBaked
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm
I don’t see any caveats in that document for “when the enemy operates (as) Islamic terrorists do, fighting in the shadows under no country