“Waterboarding? Nah, its just like surfing. Dead fun.”
July 22nd, 2008 at 23:02
As you may know, the world is currently fighting a War on Terror. It’s pretty important – as the so-called war is causing us to tackle all sorts of important issues. Issues of war and peace, issues of civil liberties, and then there’s the debate over torture. Basically the War on Terror has more issues than your average moody teenager.
Torture is a complex issue – both proponents and opponents of torture make some points of varying validity. Opponents argue that the use of torture to extract information, or rather, essentially confessions is barbaric and goes against the ethical standards of our modern society, and even when used, can result in inaccurate or dodgy information rending it useless anyway – as if someone is hurting you, chances are you’ll say anything to make them stop. You’d probably even admit to being a terrorist, or a UKIP voter, or even Episode 1 being your favourite Star Wars film.
Proponents of torture (who do actually exist, though mostly live in America) don’t just support it on the grounds of “What’s the harm? It’ll never affect us as we don’t look ‘Muslim’ enough” – they would argue that torture could be a necessary evil to extract information, for example, if a suspected terrorist knew where a bomb was or other vague hypotheticals, like those acted out by Jack Bauer in the TV series 24, where the United Nations Convention Against Torture is broken in almost every episode.
One thing about torture is clear though – it’s a powerful technique. So powerful in fact, that it can make even opinion columnists change their mind about something. And as a loud-mouth opinion columnist myself, I can tell you the one thing I hate most in the world is admitting that I am wrong and changing my opinion.
The American torture technique du jour at the moment is water-boarding – a “process” in which the suspected terrorist has water poured over his (blindfolded) face and into his nose and mouth – causing the gagging reflex to kick in, and is made to feel as though he’s being drowned. Of course, the proponents of water-boarding claim that it isn’t torture, but then seem awfully sheepish when asked if they’d want to undergo it themselves.
A columnist for the American Vanity Fair magazine, Christopher Hitchens, recently underwent water-boarding, in the name of journalism, after he was challenged about a column he wrote where he argued that water-boarding isn’t torture. Do a search on YouTube to see the video, though it does fluctuate between distressing and hilarious depending on how much you like Hitchens. Needless to say, he changed his opinion pretty sharpish.
I think that this was very admirable of him and – and I must admit I’ve got to declare a hidden interest here – way beyond the call of duty for an opinion columnist… there’s not a chance in hell that I’d volunteer to be tortured to find out what it’s like, if you were to offer it.
This said – I will say that getting an iPhone for free is probably torture… if anyone from Apple wants to prove me wrong; I’ll grudgingly accept any free gifts – entirely in the name of journalism, of course.
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