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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Some of You Have Wanted to Do This for a While Now

posted by on July 2 at 13:00 PM

Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded for the August issue of Vanity Fair. There is video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded here. I know a few people who will bookmark this page and go back to it whenever they read a Hitchens essay from now on.

Speaking of torture, the soundtrack for the waterboarding video is really, really bad.

RSS icon Comments

1

I've always wanted to set up a waterboarding station at the Republican National Convention.

Posted by w7ngman | July 2, 2008 1:22 PM
2

No waterboarding for me ... reading a Hitchens essay was torture enough.

Posted by RonK, Seattle | July 2, 2008 1:29 PM
3

is that walter sobchak? i'm surprised he chose the carmina burana. he's an enigma.

Posted by infrequent | July 2, 2008 1:32 PM
4

This is actually the least painful of all Hitchens' essays I have read.

Posted by Greg | July 2, 2008 1:36 PM
5

Does it count if you know you're not going to die?

Posted by Trevor | July 2, 2008 1:37 PM
6

Alexander Cockburn will surely be responsible for at least half the hits on that video.

Posted by Jeff Stevens | July 2, 2008 1:46 PM
7

Wow, he made it through like half a cup of water being poured on him for 10 seconds.

Posted by D | July 2, 2008 1:50 PM
8

if they used scotch instead of water, we'd be reading an entirely different Hitchens essay right now.

Posted by brett | July 2, 2008 2:09 PM
9

Well, I guess if you have to disdain or trivialize something that's extremely unlikely to happen to you, then feel free to carry on as if this practice is acceptable under any convention, especially if you dislike the subject's writing. Unbelievable! No wonder we're not surprised that a woman drops dead on a NYC hospital ER floor and is ignored for hours. We haven't been waterboarded, we've been syrup-titiously anesthetized.

Posted by RHETT ORACLE | July 2, 2008 2:40 PM
10

@9 who the fuck said waterboarding is acceptable? no one did. and now we're all responsible for a NYC ER death? grow a sense of humor.

Posted by brett | July 2, 2008 2:48 PM
11

I still hate my ex for posting a stranger valentine that said my love for him felt like waterboarding.

Fucker.

Posted by catnextdoor | July 2, 2008 3:15 PM
12

It's a travesty that it's taken so long for someone so well-known to get waterboarded on video and write about it.
For all of Hitchens' faults, I respect him for this.. and for changing his opinion to state that waterboarding is actually torture.

Posted by treacle | July 2, 2008 4:20 PM
13

Were they trying to get him talk? Or to stop talking?

Heh, that joke is by a friend of mine.

Here's my joke:

Trying to cure a hangover, Hitch?

@5 - it certainly does, to some degree. That's what's irked me abut seeing FOX news douchebags getting waterboarded in the past -- it was a controlled environment, and they knew the people weren't going to kill them, and it would stop when they wanted it to stop. If these folks were kidnapped, slapped around, forced to listen to bad hair metal from loud loudspeakers, etc etc, and then had to do this?

Or, another litmus test: if Patty Hearst rejoined the Symbionese Liberation Army, and they kidnapped a daughter of a president, and waterboarded her, you know... the reaction would not be good.

And it would set back the liberation of Symbonia another generation!

Posted by CP | July 2, 2008 5:47 PM
14

Brett @ 8, if they'd used scotch instead of water, it would have been... any other Hitchens column.

Posted by CP | July 2, 2008 5:51 PM
15

George W. Bush apparently is "the fuck" who said waterboarding is acceptable. And only those who ignored the dying woman are responsible for ignoring her - not distant, detached Seattlites. Sense of humor here OK as the dead woman had been waterboarded because W. thought she was Cindy Sheehan. All OK now?

Posted by RHETT ORACLE | July 2, 2008 6:13 PM

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