Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding

Just in case the revelation that American torturers took their cues from that model of moral clarity that was the Chinese Communist regime hasn't fully convinced you that the practice is unquestionably, incontrovertibly evil, Christopher Hitchens' column in the August 2008 Vanity Fair, "Believe Me, It's Torture," ought to drive the point home. That is, if the accompanying video, available online at Vanity Fair's website, doesn't do it first.

In the video, Christopher Hitchens is brought, hooded and bound, into an austere looking storage room, and placed on a board, slightly elevated at its foot. He is instructed by the similarly masked interrogators on how to call a halt to the procedure, either through a safe word - "red" - or by releasing the "dead man's handle" - a metal object placed in each hand. A towel is placed over his face and one of the interrogators begins pouring water on Hitchens' face from an ordinary-looking milk carton. The interrogators demonstrate no more aggression that one might when watering a houseplant. In fact, the process looks so unremarkable that you begin to wonder if they aren't simply "warming Hitchens up" for something worse.

Seventeen seconds pass, and then Hitchens drops the dead man's handle. When the hood is removed, it is jarring to see how panic-stricken Hitchens looks.

In the video, Hitchens describes the experience:

They told me that when I activated the 'dead man's handle' - which is a simple process, you simply release something, let it go - I didn't do that. I practically, even though my hands were bound, I...as near as I could...I threw the thing out of my hand. I mean, I really wanted it to stop.

I could swear I shouted the code word, but I hadn't.

Everything completely goes on you when you're breathing water. You can't think about anything else.

It would be bad enough if you did have something. Suppose if they wanted to know where a relative of yours was...or a lover. You feel, "Well, I'm going to betray them now. Because this has to come to an end. I can't take this anymore." But what if you didn't have anything? What if you'd got the wrong guy? Then you would be in danger of losing your mind very quickly.

That last paragraph, I believe, is critical, especially considering the torture practices of the Chinese Communists - who we are now emulating - were designed to elicit false confessions from those who were tortured.

Attention should be paid to the aftermath of the experience as well, which Hitchens relates thusly:

As a result of this very brief experience, if I do anything that gets my heart rate up, and I'm breathing hard, panting, I have a slight panic sensation that I'm not going to be able to catch my breath again...lately I've been having this feeling of waking up feeling smothered, trying to push everything off my face.

It takes only seventeen seconds to impact the life of an innocent man.

PREVIOUSLY, ON THE HUFFINGTON POST: Former U.S. Navy Seal Kaj Larsen experienced waterboarding firsthand, and recounted the ordeal for the Huffington Post (and on CurrentTV) in a piece titled: "A Lesson For Mukasey: Why I Had Myself Water-Boarded"

Comments

[fedup07]

okay, next should be all the chickenhawk neocons who think torture is just swell and that Gitmo is 'more like boy scout camp than a jail'

Let's do Cheney, Bush, Bill Kristol, Bolton, Jeb Bush, Wolfowitz, Rove, Feith, Perle, Scooter Libby, and Abrams just to name a few.

Then let's do their paid for propagandists: Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Buchanan, Savage, Bennett, and Will just to name a few.

[AzRealProgressive]

And just how would you deal with people who would kill you for your beliefs? File a police report,?Suggest these people attend anger management classes?

And especially you fedup07, America is decadent in their eyes, and weak. So that includes you, and all who are Christian or pretend to be atheists. They hate that even worse.

[lanshark]

If you can't capture them alive, you kill them. If you capture one, you try them in court, and put them in jail. But you don't torture them:

"They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each…target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001877

Abu Zubaydah did minor logistics work for Al Qaeda, but he didn't actually know anything about their plans. All his torture did was waste untold dollars in wasted man hours tracking down non-existent plots.

[davidpeace]

When they actually kill, or commit a crime? HELL, YES!!!! 9/11 was a crime, not an act of war. Instead of secretly detaining and torturing people, we should be tracking down the real people responsible and PROSECUTING THEM. If we can't do it impartially because it's still emotionally raw, then ratify the International Criminal Court treaty and send them to the Hague.

As for the atheist remark, maybe you should try looking at the world differently, perhaps as I see it. You might understand why I've concluded there can't be a god. Take the bible colored glasses off and SEE the world.

[YellowPanties]

Abrams? Do you mean JJ Abrams? Come on, "Lost" is still good!

[Tulka2]

Poor Chris. He thought the left wusses for not backing Bush's war. He thought we were spoiled babies because we were not willing to spread death and mayham on innocents for the sake of our own freedoms. Now he tries to weasle his way back into our good graces by voluntering for waterboarding. I am not impressed. For someone so smart he has a singular lack of imagination. Most leftists shudder at the thought of torture because we are not empathy impaired.

[sa]

this is a miniscule shard of truth,
behind which, a cauldron of hell was conducted.
how much of this was done -
to how many,
for how long?
how many died?
how many confessed to "anything" to make it stop?

only one thing is certain -
america has become the great satan.

what we fought against, we became.
we are, the axis of evil.

[RobtBrock]

Man, they could have raised a ton of money for a worthwhile charity if they had sold tickets to this event.

[nyboomer]

A raffle on how long he would last could have generated enough money to pay for the war in Iraq.

[flydoghead]

Well, so much for the moral high ground.................

[openhand]

To be fair to Hitch water can be quite a shock, but if it was a Malt Whiskey he would probably still be there...

[Tulka2]

Ha! Laughing with U.

[chicagoken]

Hmmm, I wonder if this experience will effect Hitchens fondness for George W Bush

[Jason357]

Anybody who's swallowed wrong and gagged knows it'd be no fun to be forced to do that for an extended period of time. Do Americans actually have to each experience that for themselves? Have we become children who won't perceive anything until we touch that hot stove ourselves?

I thought Hitchens was a "shock and awe" sort of guy. That's a great picture. He looks bad.

[chicago25624]

How convenient, the board was not slanted downward but he was flat. And that is not water boarding pouring itsy bitsy portions of water

Water Boarding involves strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person's arms and legs so he can't move at all, and they cover his face.Sometimes the person is gagged, and cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person's face. Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person's mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person's mind "believes" he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.

I am trying to remember the last person who drowned or died from water boarding. So may you on the wrong side of this can give us a few names.

Of course this post will never make it as the thought police will surely ppull it as it doesn't fit their template.

[Jason357]

The article says it was slightly inclined at the feet. It sounds like they were following the format used. I thought it was interesting how cold the captors were. That's a big psychological weapon. It's creepy for someone to be doing something that horrific and being so cold about it. It sends the message that you have zero value to them. I don't see how that does much to get information though. It just makes a prisoner think he'll be killed or tortured no matter what he says, if his captors act like psychopaths.

[kdubbg]

Are you saying that this wasn't torture because it's not as bad as what it would really be like? Isn't that sort of proving the point> If he was waterboarded, and thinks he was tortured, just imagine how much worse it could get.

What more proof do we need to show that these techniques do not help and should be stopped?

[lanshark]

Pulling out someone's fingernail is torture, but it certainly isn't going to kill you.

I couldn't find any accounts of detainees held by US that died from waterboarding, but we have had quite a few tortured detainees die (here's just a very few that were murdered):

*Prisoner tortured by a CIA officer died of hypothermia after he was doused with cold water and left to stand in the cold in Afghanistan
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866

*CIA contractor, David Passaro, beat an Afghan farmer, Abdul Wali, to death using his hands, feet and a flashlight. Said Akbar, governor of Kunar Provence (location of the murder), has stated that Wali's death became a tool for terrorist recruiting and "created a huge setback for Afghanistan's national reconciliation efforts". Passaro's ex-wife says that he was violent and abusive with her and the kids.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/18/iraq/main624656.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207591,00.html

*Two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, died after being hung by their wrists and severely beaten by U.S. soldiers.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/259/story/38775.html

*Testimony from Lawrence Wilkerson, ex-Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, 6/18/08, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights: At least 25 detainees murdered, and over have hundred died in US custody:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/

[lanshark]

Pulling out someone's fingernail is torture, but it certainly isn't going to kill you.

I couldn't find any accounts of detainees held by US that died from waterboarding, but we have had quite a few tortured detainees die:

*Prisoner tortured by a CIA officer died of hypothermia after he was doused with cold water and left to stand in the cold in Afghanistan
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866

*CIA contractor, David Passaro, beat an Afghan farmer, Abdul Wali, to death using his hands, feet and a flashlight. Said Akbar, governor of Kunar Provence (location of the murder), has stated that Wali's death became a tool for terrorist recruiting and "created a huge setback for Afghanistan's national reconciliation efforts". Passaro's ex-wife says that he was violent and abusive with her and the kids.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/18/iraq/main624656.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207591,00.html

*Two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, died after being hung by their wrists and severely beaten by U.S. soldiers.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/259/story/38775.html

*Testimony from Lawrence Wilkerson, ex-Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, 6/18/08, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights: At least 25 detainees murdered, and over have hundred died in US custody:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/

[chicago25624]

Look at all the water that was wasted. Darn it people, we have global warming that is drying up all the water, and this lib wasted water on a story. How irresponsible

[chicago25624]

I wonder, is sawing off someones head with a sword torture?

[anon004]

No, it's actually a form of execution, so not really relevant to this discussion. In any case, are you trying to argue that our enemies are terrible, so we should vouluntarily debase ourselves and become just as bad? Not a very good argument if we want to be the beacon of democracy and justice in the world . . .

[senorplaid]

Excellent point and one that should be shouted into the faces of any right-wingnut so red in the face with vengeance: WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER THAN THEY ARE!!!

That means we don't use the same techniques, because we don't need to. We're better than that.

Then again, maybe we aren't, not that a wingnut could ever possibly process such a thought.

[peacekitten]

the fact that our government has done this over and over and over to perfectly innocent people is mind-boggling. hitchens was mentally scarred by it knowing full well that nothing would happen to him, and it only lasted for seventeen seconds.

just imagine the mental and emotional devastation of having it done so many times you lose count, only to be thrown back into a prison cell you are convinced you will never leave.

we now also bear the shame of having been thrown off the united nations council on human rights. we were literally "voted off the island" for the abuses of this government.

torture of another living being is unquestionably morally wrong. those who have condoned it must be punished for the crimes against humanity they have committed, one way or the other.

what has become of our humanity?

[AzRealProgressive]

You my friend have never been to Mexico. Want to scare a Mexican prisoner so bad he will tell you anything you want?

Bring in a case of Ginger Ale.

Do what the Federales do, shake up the can real good, hold it under his nose with his head back and open the can allowing the carbonation up the nose of the prisoner. Takes 2 seconds and as I understand it feels like someone is exploding something inside your head.

Does anyone throw Mexico out for decades of this torture or, for their execution of an airplane full of student protesters who they threw out of an airplane after being arreste?. Or how many Indians they have killed in the South?

Where is your protests? Another bankrupt America hater.

[worrierqueen]

Any country that uses torture is not civilised and loses all respect in the world. It also makes it impossible to lecture others about human rights. After much prodding by the USA, the UN Human rights commission's voting system for electing countries to the commission was democratised. The first country to be booted off the commission under the new rules was the USA as it now has the worst human rights record of any democracy.

The light on the hill has gone out and the founding fathers would be ashamed at what their country has become.

[AzRealProgressive]

You make a good point. Being booted off a UN council we provide for, over a democracy(s) who really respects human rights like say Nigeria, South Africa (Robert Mugabe) and the Sudan is pretty terrible.

Possibly we should adopt Sharia law. Cut off offending body parts and stone people we do not agree with to death. That is far more moral than waterboarding a terrorist. And meets with UN approval.

What on earth shall we do?

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Note that Hitchens reaction was to being waterboarded by "FRIENDLIES" who were NOT bent on eliciting confessions.

(Or, per the pro-waterboard crowd, major city-saving pertinent and timely intel.)

Just imagine being waterboarded by your ENEMIES.

Or even some pissed-off Gitmo detainees.

[TheLar]

Can Kaj Larson sue Hitchens for plagarism? He did the same thing in October 2007.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kaj-larson/a-lesson-for-mukasey-why_b_70651.html

Are you sure that was water they were dunking Hitchens in and not vodka?
Oh snap! No he didn't!

[Vinca]

I just went to Mike Malloy's website and watched Hitchen's being waterboarded, I think it would have BEEN MUCH WORSE, if it had been for real, although, it was bad