So the cloth over your face is kind of a key aspect. I mean, torture wouldn’t be very torturous if it wasn’t 1000x worse, would it?
Naw, Mancow’s one of those occasional odd ducks who talks like Howard Stern but thinks like Sean Hannity. One second he’s talking about how huge his dick is and the number of girls he banged over the weekend, or palling around with one of his daily guests (possibly his sidekick, Turd, or his dwarf friend, Pocket, or until his sad passing, the mentally challenged Cowboy Ray) and then will a second later call for Howard Dean to be kicked out of America and call Obama ‘Barack Heussein Osama’. An all around classy dude.
While watching the video I found myself wondering what the fuck the clown-thing was doing in the background. Then I remembered that Mancow has always been a huge fan of ICP. Ugh.
I think any form of waterboarding is torture. I’m just saying the guy did his experiment wrong - especially compared to someone like Christopher Hitchens, who got the whole experience.
Ah. Yeah. I read what you were saying backwards. The marine specifies that he’s going to leave Mancow’s mouth uncovered so they can ‘hear him scream like a girl’, or something to that effect. I can only imagine that the idea was to build it up so that what Mancow manfully lasted through the entire process, he could say, “Though the Marines threw their worst at me, I survived! It’s like going swimming!”
Indeed. I’m always amazed at the large number of Chickenhawk Conservatives who just can’t understand that this is rightly called Water Torture, given than everyone who’s had it done unequivocally calls it torture, and that the US has long considered it torture when done to Americans. There’s a clue in there somewhere guys.
What’s equally maddening is how long they’ve been let off the hook on the matter by the media. Pundits who don’t believe it’s torture should be laughed off the stage unless they can make it through 20 minutes of water torture on video.
If they did it “wrong” or “less” then it just supports the point. He lasted 5 seconds with half a waterboard. Yay. Douche or not, I applaud him for finding out, rather than being a pussy like the rest of the media.
Olbermann agrees with you. I don’t think of putting your money where your mouth is more than Sean Hannity as something that I applaud, but it’s better than the alternative, sure.
Yeah, I have to give Mancow credit (I listened to him occasionally when driving but not enough to pick up racists tones) - he’d claimed waterboarding wasn’t torture on the air numerous times, all you had to do was hold your breath, etc. And that’s what it seems like for all of us who haven’t been through it - how bad can having water poured on your face be, when you can just hold your breath, etc?
And then he demonstrated it is such a traumatic experience he could only last about 6 seconds. Which demonstrated this is some horrible stuff, if you can’t handle it even a few seconds before screaming stop. And then he manned up and said on the air that he was wrong, as much as he wanted to not say it, it was, with no doubt, torture.
And yeah, so if people like Rush or Hannity want to claim waterboarding is no different than being forced to stand up in a stress position, etc. let them actually have it done. At least one conservative talk show host will now never claim waterboarding is not torture.
Mmm, don’t be so sure about that. Limbaugh will call him on the carpet and he’ll recant.
I give it three days. At the outside.
-amanpour
UPDATE: Listening to Olbermann’s show from Friday while I do some work. He claims Muller will be on Countdown next week. Hard for me to believe. Perhaps I’m underestimating him.
And to think that Mancow gave up so soon even after enduring a ‘not so 100%’ version of waterboarding too. Notice him blowing water out his mouth like a whale, yet real waterboarding stuffs a rag down your mouth to counteract that exact reaction and make it worse.
Yes, this is the guy who sent shit in the mail to HS, and yes he’s probably one of the biggest ‘tough-guy’ douchebags on radio… but I’m still impressed he put his money where the water would be. And congrats to Olberman for his donation to the waterboarders.
Based on Hitchens, Mancow, and the Playboy guy, five seconds seems to be the limit for actually “taking” it. I’m guessing that the prisoners of war had much longer sessions. We suck.
Keith Olbermann interviewed conservative radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller tonigh about his experience being waterboarded. Mancow said he agreed to be interviewed because Olbermann is a “stand up guy” for agreeing to donate $10,000 to a charity benefiting veterans (an offer previously extended to Sean Hannity) after Mancow was waterboarded.
Mancow reaffirmed that the practice was indeed torture and said that his “psychological state” going into the experiment was that he was “laughing at it. I was willing to prove, and ready to prove, that this was a joke, and I was wrong. It was horrific. It was instantaneous. And look, I felt the effects for two days.”
Mancow also revealed that his friend Sean Hannity “called me and said ‘it’s still not torture.’”
I watched the interview and Olbermann was trying to be gracious (though he read a bit too much into Mancow’s statements). However, it seemed Mancow wanted it to be a little more adversarial. I kind of get where Mancow is coming from, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t booked to do a 1/2 hour general debate. I wonder if he honestly didn’t get that or Olbermann’s people didn’t convey that well enough.
Well, when you rationalize like that Marine does you can technically talk around it all day. “It’s invoking an existing fear”. Therefore, it isn’t torture. What?
Based on Hitchens, Mancow, and the Playboy guy, five seconds seems to be the limit for actually “taking” it. I’m guessing that the prisoners of war had much longer sessions. We suck.
Yep, long sessions and several times a day. Yay America!
