Gin-soaked ex-Trotskyite popinjay gets waterboarded!

[sabotabby]

Click for video.

Proof that I'm not as good a person as people think I am is how much I enjoyed watching this. But I mean, come on. It's Hitchens, whose "sensible liberal" petitions and statements gave moral weight to the atrocities that America and the UK have visited on Iraq. So he kind of had it coming.

Hat tip: apperception.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Hm... safe word (red) and everything, just like a scene.

[sabotabby]

I was thinking about that. Is it torture if you consent? Or is it the neo-con version of kink?

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

//dies

NICE

....I wonder if the people who are actually being _trained_ to resist (HA) that shit get a safeword. I would suspect not. Then again those procedures seemed pretty automatic.

Ehh, I loathe him, but gotta give him a little bit of credit for actually undergoing it, training wheels version or not. I bet TPTB wouldn't.

[realcdaae.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah.

Horrible nonetheless.

[sabotabby]

Horrible? Hilarious? There's a thin line, especially when it comes to teh Hitch.

everybody breaks.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

WTF is up with that WHACK soundtrack? -- ohh, it's some kind of disorientation trick. Ha. I thought it might be Enya. I think they had to turn it down that abruptly for the audio to be clear.

....ha, they gave him baby PTSD. Poor jerk. "You are not being boarded. You are being watered," that's not bad.

Man, if someone knows that you'll do anything to get what you want from them, they'll do anything to give you what they want. Not to sound all bleaker-than-thou but it amazes me how some people really don't get that. Then again I guess they're the lucky ones. It's one of those things you can't really imagine (either that or the wish not to be able to is the same thing, whatever).

Re: everybody breaks.

[sabotabby]

That soundtrack would break me. Holy shit.

Re: everybody breaks.

[syndicalist.livejournal.com]

Is that what the deal with the music was..? I was wondering if it was meant to unnerve, calm, what? Someone says at the beginning something like, "I hope you enjoy the music."

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Hitchens is neither sensible nor liberal. Over here they call themselves "the decent left", despite being neither leftists nor particularly decent.

[sabotabby]

I think I like "decent left" even more than I like "sensible liberal." My God. At long last, decency, etc.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

I'm curious to watch it but afraid it'd really freak me out. Hm.

[hopita.livejournal.com]

Likewise.

[seriesfinale.livejournal.com]

If only it indeed had been gin, he'd still be there right now

[sabotabby]

*snort*

That's bad.

[soberloki.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I found it both creepy as shit and remarkably tame.

Creepy because even though it's a fake torture session, everyone's masked, and tame because HE GETS A FUCKING SAFE WORD AND A NON-VERBAL SIGNAL AS WELL.

I hope it scared the everloving shit out of him.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I would guess that the reason everyone is masked is because the "torture" could be consider assault, the video as evidence for a crime, and they didn't want such evidence in the public eye.

I know I wouldn't.

And, yes, he did consent to this -- but my understanding is that, generally, consent to assault is not considered a defense to charges of assault.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Why'd they stop?

[northbard.livejournal.com]

insurance.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

it's interesting how he's backed off his warmongering in the past two years or so.
almost makes me wonder if this is, in some part, an attempt to push the perception of him even further from that.

[sabotabby]

I think he knows he's wrong but he's too vain to ever admit it.

[syndicalist.livejournal.com]

This is a serious question: What is with the music...?

[sabotabby]

Music used as torture or accompanying torture is old meme. He's lucky they didn't give him the Backstreet Boys.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I can't bring myself to watch it. I don't think I could even if it was a triple act of Bush, Cheney and Gonzalez.

[sabotabby]

...I might have to draw a cartoon of that.

Off Topic Comic

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

LOL Bat!

Re: Off Topic Comic

[sabotabby]

I would show you the LOLcat/Torchwood crossover, but you haven't seen Torchwood, have you?

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I really really enjoyed watching our old gin-swilling misogynist friend undergo this. God, am I evil insde or what? :)

[sabotabby]

I think we're secretly bad people who shouldn't be put in positions of power. Probably.

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

Thank yous go to apperception.

[sabotabby]

apperception appreciation.

[theoldanarchist.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I have posted the link on my Facebook. I hope others will watch it.

[sabotabby]

I should do that too.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

One thing I wondered about the revisionist position on waterboarding - which is that it's mainly an irritant, an extreme form of nagging - is why would we do it if that's all it did? Presumably these are committed terrorists and we want answers from them and no fooling. If it wasn't torture, and horrific torture at that, it simply wouldn't answer the purpose! The same must go for the other forms of "enhanced questioning" - sleep deprivation, etc. Why would anyone doubt they're torture? That's what they're FOR!

[sabotabby]

That's reality-based thinking. We don't do that here.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Psst! ... Or rather, bzzt!

[sabotabby]

"Fortunately, I've always used swarms of cockroaches to pollinate my rose blossoms, so I'm safe...for now."

Win.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I dunno about you, but that music made the whole thing a whole lot more disturbing. I mean WTF, are you on a kinky date with those guys?!

Also, it was greatly disturbing to just by the very concept of what that asshole was demonstrating and couldn't watch it to the end.
I'm a wuss, I know.

And bloody time zones, I missed all the interesting discussions.

[sabotabby]

I got the sense from the article that he was into them a bit.

I think this post will end up with more comments than the corset post. I'm a bit disappointed.

[syndicalist.livejournal.com]

Did anyone notice this line in Hitchens's written account of this experience:

"Waterboarding is for Green Berets in training, or wiry young jihadists whose teeth can bite through the gristle of an old goat."

Nice, Hitch.

[sabotabby]

In fairness, it wouldn't really be Hitch if there wasn't a racist stereotype in there somewhere.

[jk-fabiani.livejournal.com]

Next, watch Chris get bombed, lose a limb, and experience surgery in an hospital without power or medicine.

[sabotabby]

Suffering is only abstract to him unless he personally experiences it.