What Is Waterboarding?

I thought this was a fascinating look at a very controversial practice in the news a lot right now: waterboarding. [***Language warning***]

Via Breitbart, a tragicomic staple of liberal anti-torture sanctimony from which not even Hitchens, alas, is immune. Every few months a new clip of some critic of waterboarding being waterboarded hits the web, and every few months a new iteration of web users is left to wonder, “If it’s so horribly bad, why is this guy willing to undergo it?” I told a friend earlier today that I hate blogging about this subject because there’s simply no reasoning with the other side. Like Ace says, the left is unwilling to defend banning the practice in good faith, on grounds that the trade-off in lost intelligence is worth the toehold on the slippery slope, because they’re unwilling to risk the political consequences of that position if we’re attacked again. So they argue disingenuously that enhanced interrogation never, ever, evah works, even though (a) sometimes it does and (b) some of the leading lights on their side actually define “torture” as a function of its efficacy. I’ll leave you with this nugget from Twitter. It’s as good a lead-in as any to the clip.

@andylevy You know who I bet would really be ashamed at us for fake-drowning an archterrorist? The WTC jumpers.

You've gotta' hand it to this guy for having the guts to go through it himself. I don't recall ever seeing this procedure in such detail before, though I've read about it any number of times. It's amazing to watch in action, don't you think? No actual danger being posed to the person, but almost instant capitulation.

Torture: "the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty"

Is this torture? No way. Anyone who thinks this is torture has their eyes closed to what real torture is. Slicing and dicing body parts is torture. Electrical shocks, crushing of fingers, and permanent physical damage is torture. Forcing someone to watch while their spouse or child is raped and cut apart is torture. Those are the things that our enemies do (it's well documented, if you don't believe me).

We tip the guy down and pour little bit of water up his nose.

Waterboarding is not torture because there is no permanent physical damage, nor is there any mental anguish [radical Islamic terrorists strive for and worship death, so there is no anguish found in the panic reaction they talked about in this video]. Waterboarding is a phenomenally effective way to get information out of captives quickly without harming them. Our own soldiers go through it as part of their training.

Ultimately, here's how we need to look at this. If there was a nuclear bomb somewhere inside the United States, and it was set to go off in one hour, and we had a prisoner who knew where it was, would you condone this procedure? If literally millions of American lives -- possibly yours or those of your family and friends -- were at stake, would you accept this practice as a way to get actionable intelligence out of that captive in just a few seconds?

I'd say pass me the water.

There's my two cents.