Thanks to the confirmation of Judge Michael Mukasey as the new Attorney General, “Waterboarding” has become a household term. This has set off a hot debate in all corners of the media and throughout Washington concerning the use of what the White House terms “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.” Indeed, the question does not seem to be whether or not to torture, but how. As Hendrick Hertzbert wrote in the New Yorker:
At the present dismal and disorienting moment, everything, as they say in Washington, is on the table. Before September 11, 2001, no one imagined that a time would come when the permissibility of torture would be an urgent topic of public discussion, let alone something like the official, though of course unacknowledged, policy of the United States.
Unafraid of muddying the waters even further, Hawke and Dove explore the historical use of torture as an interrogation method, the relevancy of information obtained through techniques commonly understood to be torturous, and throughout it all Mr. Hawke tries to prove the usefulness of such techniques by subjecting himself to each one, in turn. In protest of Mr. Hawke torturing himself throughout the episode, Mr. Dove has promised to devote a future episode entirely to pleasuring himself.
UPDATE: Turns out the Mississippi Supreme Court defined the “water-cure” (which was then slang for waterboarding” as torture in 1926, no ifs, ands or buts. How will this breaking news affect the debate?
Ooh…ingrown nails. Now *that’s* torture.
Left by Heather on November 14th, 2007