Stump Lane

Q: What’s more disturbing than the definition of waterboarding our “elected” “leaders” like to openly and politely discuss in dulcet tones?

A: A frank explanation of real waterboarding:

Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral. [SWJ Blog: Waterboarding is Torture… Period]

Keep this in mind at all times as you consider words of Attorney General Nominee Mike Mukasey:

“I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Now, Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) thought those were weasel words. No wait, “a massive hedge,” he said. (They were.) But Whitehouse got the follow-up all wrong! He pressed Mukasey for an opinion on whether waterboarding was torture.

YOU: Ok, so what would your follow-up have been, smart ass?

ME: I was going to tell you anyway, but since you asked I’ll tell you anyway.

YOU: Uh… What?!

ME: Just read on…

Since Mukasey’s statement isn’t really all that unreasonable, one might have said: “Fair enough. But let’s just say the president authorized waterboarding, and it turns out that waterboarding is torture. As the chief law enforcement officer of the country, would you feel compelled to prosecute the president for that crime?”

And Mukasey’s answer would be, “Um no,” because he’s another one of them unitary executive types.

Your Montag has written about this before, back when we were confirming Justice Alito. I did so in the form of a football analogy which may be interesting in light of the Super Bowl incredibly over-hyped game coming up this Sunday.

And read the rest of that waterboarding link!