The radio talk show host Mancow now concedes that waterboarding is indeed torture. He had been trying to prove otherwise.
”It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow reluctantly admitted after undergoing the experience. “I got voted to do this, but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off'” (NBC Miami News, May 22,2009). So far only two defenders of Bush’s (and increasingly Obama’s) policy of perpetual war, Mancow and Christopher Hitchens, have been waterboarded. This firsthand experience led both to classify the procedure as torture. Apparently, this is the only way to convince pro-war conservatives, or their fellow travelers, of the obvious.
Stunningly, Mancow still thinks that the government (now led by his nemesis Obama) should be able to use waterboarding. Perhaps it is time to try something else. Let’s bribe Mancow and his pro-torture allies to skip the next episode of “24” and devote the time to reading what Lord Acton wrote about power.