Lefty blogs punked by Mancow “torture” stunt(?); Updated
Last week, liberal blogs went ga-ga over radio talk show host Mancow’s waterboarding stunt.
Matthew Yglesias wet his pants. He featured Mancow’s photo and the blaring headline: “Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboard to Prove It’s Not Torture, Realizes He Was Wrong.”
MSNBC and HuffPo embraced him. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post piled on. So did Jonathan Chait: “I think the torture debate would be mighty different if more of the conservatives who scoff at waterboarding would try the same thing.”
And Think Progress. And Andrew Sullivan.
Now, there’s a paper trail that suggests the glaringly obvious — that it was all an elaborate hoax, reportedly orchestrated with the help of Jerry Springer’s publicist.
Time for B.S. detector tune-ups, people. Next time, libs, don’t be so eager to hype a veteran radio entertainer crying “torture.”
You’re the ones who end up all wet.
***
Linda Shafran, publicist for Mancow and Springer among other celebs, e-mails the following statement:
BORED BLOGGERS ARE ALL WET
By Mancow Muller May 29, 2008I am not a magician. Many news cameras were there!
Obviously, it was on the radio and I wasn’t in prison. I’m also not a radicalized Muslim terrorist. But it was not a hoax! I repeat: NOT A HOAX.
We kept telling management, the insurance companies, and the local Chicago cops we weren’t really going to do it – until we did. Otherwise, they weren’t gonna let us do it! We got a U.S. Marine that told us he had studied how to do it and he volunteered to waterboard me in return for a mention of his charity.
I was on a decline and I was waterboarded. Was I in chains? No. Does that make it less real? I am failing to get the point attempted by my detractors. We never claimed it was an exact recreation.
The CIA technique is exactly what we did:
1. Keep the chest elevated above the head and neck to keep the lungs “above the waterline.”
2. Incline the head, both to keep the throat open and to present the nostrils for easier filling.
3. Force the mouth open so that water can be poured into both the nose and mouth.
Sorry, I thought for years it wasn’t torture and now I do. The video is there for all to see.The left has taken my message and distorted it as well. Would I wanterboard to save my daughters (or any American children)? Yes!
The three terrorists that were waterboarded at Guantanamo were done so by military professionals. And it was done to save lives with America’s best interests at heart. Mine was a silly radio time filler in comparison. Its apples & hand grenades!
It would be insane to equate what I did with anything that happens in prison. I am simply a free man in a radio studio that always tries to get inside the big issues. This is an ugly issue with no easy answers. But I now see it’s easier for some to dismiss me than to do any real soul searching on this very heady issue.
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It’d be even better if Mancow would now say; “Torture? Hell, I liked it.”
Hot Air had three posts on it. Were they punked as well?
This is the same Mancow who accepts phone calls from jailed Drew Peterson on his radio show. What a Jerk.
So, business as usual for him and the rest of the Unhinged?
If these leftards spent half as much time worrying about defeating these Islamists as they do in worrying that captured ones’ feelings were hurt, we’d have a chance of stopping the Jihadi’s.
Clearly, yes.
And???
Glass houses, stones, etc.
Mookie,
Allah knew exactly what it was and treated it accordingly: “the first torture technique in history that can double as a shock-jock radio bit.”
Random thought….
Maybe he did it with the predisposition to call it torture no matter what in order to restore proper fear of the process in our enemies.
Fair enough.
Mancow is hilarious. Glad he’s back on the radio. Hope he gets back on Fox & Friends soon.
Michelle, I hadn’t read them, since I considered the whole thing kind of silly. Anyway, even if hot air was “punked”, they clearly didn’t lose thier minds over this like huffpo and thier bigoted followers did. I consider it torture and really don’t care if it is used. Because the arguements against using torture on jihadis are all crap.
1/ They would torture and kill caputured us soldiers ANYWAY. I have 1300 years of history to back that up.
2/ In mt opinion, they should all have been POWS to start with. We hold them till the end of the war and we get to say when that is.
3/ If we saved American lives by this, then torture away. The guys who tortured should then get medals. I wonder why obama will not release those memos. 1 American is worth 2000 jihadis in my books. Mookie doesn’t like that???? tough.
Oh and glass houses??? Grow up. No democrat has any right to make that claim after the last 8 years.
Obama has personally ordered the death of as many people as were waterboarded. Where’s the outrage from the left?
Oh, right. They have no respect for human life.
One would be hard pressed to find a method of making terrorists talk if it didn’t at least make them uncomfortable in the process.
Many people who ever slid down a water slide on their back at a water park probably experienced an uncomfortable feeling as if they were drowning if the water hit them in the face just right – they pay for that privilege.
All liberals do is find issues where they can display their false indignation for political purposes or to direct attention from something they’ve done wrong.
I actually don’t mind Mancow and his over-the-top, shock jock attempts of making a point (in his way). He’s in the same category as Howard Stern who really just needs to get over himself and his lame, oversexed, Sirius radio show. Then again, Stern was supposedly going to be the savior of satellite radio yet couldn’t seem to prevent the inevitable merging of XM and Sirius.
The liberal blogosphere will always be punked because they can’t be bothered with actually doing real research or legwork to make sure a story is actually a story and a stunt is actually a stunt.
Thanks for playing libs. Stay classy.
lol @ #11 & #12
the ignorance of the far right is very amusing
It matters not a fig what anyone says they “feel” it is.
Waterboarding is not torture, as that term is defined in the law. Period.
According to a lot of people, depriving people of sleep is also “torture”.
I doubt any of us would find any interrogation technique in common use in police stations…and depicted on television virtually every night of the week…across our county “comfortable”. That NEVER makes them “torture”.
TheOtherSide said: Nothing
Hoax? Or, not a hoax?
Punked? Or, not punked?
That is the question. And, the answer will be delivered when any trusted individual from the ‘right’ subjects themselves to waterboarding.
Hmmm, who can we get to prove Mancow merely created an elaborate scheme to make fun of others who may have taken him seriously? Who indeed? Volunteers?
The thing is, if Mancow’s intentions were less than noble, wouldn’t he have concluded the scenario by punking Olberman live, on his show, when interviewed by him?
If the lefty Blogs have been punked why not complete the ‘punking’ with Olberman? Why not reveal the ‘hoax’ at that time?
Nope. Can’t volunteer myself. I’ve said before that I would admit to being the Queen of England if waterboarded. We need some who does not think that waterboarding is torture and who would never admit that they are the Queen of England.
Hmmm, who do we all trust that would volunteer?
All he said is that he fells that it is torture now. He still says that he supports its’ use on terrorists- in no way has he had any kind of a liberal conversion.
Lets try it on the other side.
Maybe everybody who goes through SEAL training?
How about the thousands of US service personnel?
How about you read the law?
Do you think it is “torture” to deprive people of sleep?
Do you think it is “torture” to keep people in cold or heat for protracted periods of time, while concurrently monitoring their vital signs?
Notice the QUESTION MARKS?
What if it is torture ? I dont care if million of them are tortured to save an american life.
How would you define the term “publicity stunt”?
Why would a person perpetrating a publicity stunt willingly sacrifice the value of the stunt by revealing that they were involved in a subterfuge?
NOTE the QUESTION MARKS?
Ahhh, I do so love this topic. “Waterboarding = torture.” I hear it so often from my own liberal “friends.” Of course, when one points out that legally, waterboarding is NOT torture, they erupt into emotional spasms about what/how they feel.
Of course, with minimal snarkiness intended, my far-right friends are just as guilty with their “abortion = murder” antics. Because, similarly, abortion is not murder, according to the legal definition of murder. How the feel about abortion is a different matter.
Why does it even matter if it was real or not? This isn’t about truth and no one really cares anyway. Even if it were a well respected conservative…no one who supports waterboarding would change their mind no matter what. It isn’t about truth…it is about picking a side and never leaving it. Jesus Christ himself could come back and demonstrate this technique…I promise you that it would make no difference. He would be turned on and called a RINO.
What a stupid thread – using a blog to criticize other blogs.
Why are you people so intent on claiming water-boarding isn’t torture?
Mookie – Never miss a chance to blast your hostess do you? Why ARE you here?
Why no comment on the actual subject that it was a HOAX? And why he would stoop to a HOAX? Eh? Rhetorical… don’t bother.
I wonder how Lefties reconcile “No Torture!!!!!” with “Go ahead and abort it”?
There’s another thread criticizing Dear Leader and his non-affiliation affiliation with ACORN … however, I’m willing to bet that you find that one stupid as well.
You have no credibility why are you so oblivious to this fact?
Or, Mookie… about how eagerly the lefty blogs ate it up?
Nope, never anything about the topic, just your inane, really OFF moral equivilencies…
Well, the Left does so enjoy trying to change the definition of “marriage.” I guess the Right changing to defintion of “torture” is just, oh, what’s that expression about turnabout equaling fair play?
Spanking isnt pleasant. It’s also not comfortable. It’s also not torture.
Oh, if only some brilliant engineer could harness the hydro-power of progressive crocodile tears… does green power get any better than that?
What a stupid comment – using a comment to criticize other comments.
And, seriously, it’s only you loonies on the left who care whether 3 al Qaeda terrorists where scared and made uncomfortable. I’ll reserve my outrage to use against those who killed 2,996 of our friends, neighbors, and love ones on that day you on the left want to pretend didn’t happen.
William – Especially the deliver the baby to within seconds of being born alive but instead, keep the head inside and stab their skulls and SUCK OUT THEIR BRAINS.
No torture there! /sarc (Included tag for the morally dead amongst us)
It’s legal, safe & rare.
Oh I mean waterboarding not abortion.
Stupid paragraph.
You probably don’t think that a life prison sentence is torture, but you would probably admit to being the Queen of England in order to get released.
Yup
According to several U.S. military interrogators, (of captured foreign fighters who admitted they came to Iraq solely to act as suicide bombers in revenge for fellow Muslim treatment at Abu Garib and Gitmo) our use of torture led directly to the deaths of as many as 1000 U.S. soldiers. You torture mongers have to live with that consequence.
…perhaps Mookie is a follower of Saul Alinksky?
sorry…Saul Alinsky
Source?
You ARE aware that Islamofascists put out manuals on what lies to tell, right?
Apples to oranges. Unless you’re claiming that torture occurred at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Are you?
What “treatment at Gitmo”?
SilverCat… What a joke…you mean to say terrorists wouldn’t kill/torture anyhow? Where have you been?
We have been at war with them for something THEY started.
They’d do it to get 70 virgins in heaven or for sex they couldn’t didn’t get last Saturday Night-very trivial reasons to kill…
Funny thing is your Lord and Master Barack Obama has already kept the policy to the consternation of Leftards like you…and I’ll bet everyone of you guys: Mookie, The Other Side et al will still kiss B.O.’s behind when he does it..AND LOOK THE OTHER WAY
Yes, SilverCat, let’s see the source and some proof.
Oh, look, here’s AQ’s torture manual: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html
Hi 30 pcs of silver, It’s so good to hear from you.
How’s your husband handling having a black President?
It must be terrible for him?
Pictures could surface of Dick Cheney himself ramming a truncheon up a 15 year old Iraqi boys culo…and the right would either ignore the pics and story totally by concentrating on ACORN or stand by him and claim that his patriotic truncheon saved American lives.
The left could find out the pic was a photoshop and say its a cover up…you get the picture.
Stupid.
…just reading the above is torture
No they couldn’t. On the other hand, pictures of that nature could emerge in San Francisco, and you’d call it “protected speech”.
Truth.
I don’t claim to know what the truth is. Yet.
On the other hand, pictures of that nature could emerge in San Francisco, and you’d call it
“protected speech”marriage.Here’s the source from Andrew Sullivan’s site. May 27th 4:55 pm entitled “A Real Interrogator vs Cheney” An actual interrogator speaking on his experiences in Iraq. Torture has not saved lives but has led directly to the deaths of as many as 1000 U.S. soldiers. Foreign fighters came directly to blow themselves up to kill Americans as a result of what occurred at Gitmo & Abu Gharib.
Or maybe they call would call that “classified intelligence”…who knows.
Kinda hard to judge immorality anywhere these days.
Link, SilverCat? And, seriously, you want to use Excitable Andy as a “source?”
On 9/11 Gitmo didn’t have a detention camp and Abu Ghraib was feeding Iraqis into a chipper/shredder at the behest of Saddam Hussein. What was their excuse then?
Sorry. I have to call you a liar. You provide no evidence that what you claim is true except an unlinked claimed comment from a claimed interrogator, otherwise unidentified, on a suspect website. In fact, the number of GIs killed in Iraq has been consistently between 800-900 every year after 2003 until 2008 when they dropped to 300+. No surge of any note due to revelations about Abu Gharib (sic) or Gitmo.
Or maybe they’d call it talking out of your butt.
Oh that is good. Thanks, I cant wait to use that. Z-ZING!
Matthew Alexander has made quite a cottage industry of criticizing interrogation techniques of which he personally disapproves.
One thing that is true about what he says, the method he champions takes time. He wasn’t involved with the three waterboardees, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about with respect to them. Time was not one of the luxuries people who were trying to keep us safe had initially.
I also question how soft-headed he is. He was told by people trained to lie that they did what they did for reasons that certainly stemmed from FALSE propaganda as respects treatment of Islamofascists at GITMO. He seems to have willing swallowed that load.
IF…BIG IF…anyone was motivated to be a suicide bomber as a result of Abu Grarib, that is one of the burdens that the outlaws convicted, kicked out of the service, and demoted need to bear.
From his statement:
“Would I wanterboard [sic] to save my daughters (or any American children)? Yes!”
’nuff said?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/page/2/
Scroll down to the page and view the video. Even if the Conservative mind is solid as a rock and just as impermeable, this video is enlightening.
You little children in your protected little world where making somebody cry is “torture” need to talk to your friends in North Korea and China. They understand what torture is – like bamboo slivers under your fingernails, or having your hands tied behind your back and then being hung by your wrists…. Maybe they’d be willing to demonstrate on/for you. Or, you could try the Hussein family sport of feeding people feet first into plastic shredders. God, what a bunch of wimpy, crybaby fools you are, that you whine and cry about a US military training technique to which thousands of Americans (and 3 Arabs) have been subjected. Or proclaiming your sexual fantasies as examples of Bush Administration abuses.
One “interrogator” makes up evidence that neither he nor anyone else can verify, and we’re supposed to take it as gospel. If the real evidence supported this guy, Obama would have released the other memos long before Cheney made the request. The fact that these memos are being held back is good reason to believe that they do not support Obama’s narrative on the ineffectiveness of harsh interrogation.
We’re talking about the same people who spread rumors about Jews kidnapping and eating Arab children just to keep anti-Semitism alive. If Abu Ghraib abuse had never occurred, you can bet fictitious stories about abuse would have been invented just to encourage more suicide bombers to volunteer.
And if you think Al Qaeda sympathizers actually believe Obama when he says he has ended all use of torture, you’re living in a fantasy Obamaland.
I, for one, could not possibly continue to exist without the unwavering respect and moral high ground that liberals claim the rest of the world used to have for Americans.
IMHO, using sometimes-brutal techniques in order to obtain timely information from captured jihadists is not torture.
Using sometimes-brutal techniques in order to punish captives or provide entertainment for the captors is torture, and should be prevented at all costs.
This goes for waterboarding, or any other interrogative discipline. If it saves American lives, it must be done.
See #61. Some of us are WAY ahead of you.
Enlightenment comes from accepting true information, synthesizing it, and realizing it (giving it effect). I don’t find a lot of what “Maj. Alexander” (a pseudonym) credible. He is a guy with a book, and an apparent camera whore. Statists LOVE people like him.
I also think the pukes at ABC (I think) who outed the CIA psychologists who supervised the waterboarding regimen by name and city should be shot, and I’m not kidding. Note the way his fawning fans protect the identity of “Alexander”.
Conservatives, as is too often the case, have lost an argument by letting their opposition define it.
The question isn’t: “Is waterboarding torture?”
The correct question is: “If there’s even the SLIGHTEST chance it might yield useful information, what’s wrong with torturing mass-murdering terrorist bastards who think nothing of beheading innocents?”
We let ourselves get caught up in the definition of torture, implicitly acknowledging that there’s something wrong with torturing the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
I’d do it for sport.
Nicholas Berg – RIP
They have to. He’ll turn out to be another Beauchamp.
I’ve put this question before, but I never got an answer–
Which incident incited more Muslim outrage that we KNOW, and COULD SEE (without relying on dubious third-party accounts)…
1. Abu Gharib and GITMO
2. A cartoon in a Danish publication (that was dug up about a year after it was published by an Imam to whip up anger against the West)?
I agree. The left sometimes says, “but if you torture them they’ll do the same to Americans they might capture!!”
Duh,,,,,they will anyway…….
Yeah, I’ve wondered about the Winter Solider aspects of this cat… Nothing I can hang my hat on, and I’m not saying he is anything other than he claims. Just a feeling…
So….the people that keep bringing up Abu Ghraib do realize that that does not have anything in common with Gitmo and waterboarding? I mean, you’re all so damn smart, you do realize that, right?
Because the people at Abu Ghraib operated outside the law, were arrested, tried, convicted and are now serving their sentences, have been relieved of command, etc, etc. Oh, and they were investigated by the Army, not hmmm off the top of my head, Human Rights Watch or MSNBC.
Nothing to the similar extent has emerged from Gitmo, and you know if it had, it would be on the front page of the New York Times for the next 180 consecutive days.
Count me among those who do not care if the scum of humanity has water poured up their nose, is kept awake, or has to listen to Celine Dion at unpleasant volumes. And if it causes them to have a heart attack and die…meh.
Daniel Pearl – RIP
What you need to do is…actually win an election somehow in the future.
Right now, torture is illegal and nothing will change that. Elect yourself a Chickenhawk but make sure that he isn’t a total coward and is up front about everything! Remove ourselves from the Geneva Conventions and we can do ANYTHING we see fit to stay safe. No rules…we can be open and honest and be officially on the same playing field as the terrorists. Anything less is a cowardice.
You just did.
LOL–I can only think of the little Chicken Hawk in the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. His name was Henery Hawk, I think. The resemblance is terrifying!
Obama is going to kill a lot of people before we can get him out of office.
What is worse than any Chickenhawk?
A narcissistic idiot.
Those Republican ‘Chickens’ we elected have come home to roost!
About the same way most conservatives feel. And his angst has very little to do with the fact that the Prez is half black. It’s very telling that you statists fail to acknowledge, nay, embrace your racism … you all continue to overlook the fact that the Prez is half white. I know, doesn’t fit the narrative.
It’s a terrible time for America. On that we agree. But I think we can weather the storm, right? You guys survived George Bush!
Sorry, should have previewed…
Right. But nobody at Gitmo has been tortured.
None of the prisoners at Gitmo are covered under the Geneva Conventions, and in any event, we (and a few of our allies) are the only ones ever constrained by it. Certainly neither the NK, the Chinese, the North Vietnamese, nor any of the Arab countries have even paid as much as lip service to it – mainly because it assumes “civilized”, organized warfare, and we haven’t had much of that in the last 50 years. In fact, like the Kyoto Treaty and most other conventions and treaties the left admire so much , it is a restraint only on the U.S.
Now, I’ve never been a fireman, but I REALLY think we should fight fires…
I’ve never been a policeman, but I think we should resist crime…
Freaking idiot.
Right. Obama all over.
More like 7-8%.
OK. Agreed.
Maybe we can start with Jesse Ventura, former Navy SEAL. Though I would prefer a lay person, but yeah, there is a person who has a distinct veiw on waterboarding, and who has gone through it.
I want to see the liberal bloggers or media weenies try to have this done to them.
As a conservative I will undergoing waterboarding if they are willing to have their brains sucked out.
OK, z-troll…
One for you… Crazy Jesse is yours.
Thousands for us.
Oh, yeah, and THE LAW.
So, you’re suggesting microsurgery…???
Isn’t it amazing all of the leftist tools who come out of the woodwork to wail and moan about Dick Cheney and waterboarding, but didn’t seem to notice the other threads today about the Black Gangbangers and ACORN?
Yeah but normally Fire and Police Chiefs have actually fought fires and crimes.
Besides, the term is meant for people who have a hard on for or instigate something that they are too cowardly to participate in themselves.
OK. Agreed. We can begin former Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura, who has a distinct position on waterboarding.
OK.
Nope.
Nope.
LOL.
That is why the questions got answered. You are learning, and I am glad I helped.
Though I had wished you had cut to the chase and simply asked, ‘How do you define torture?’
Personally, I think that incinerating alive people who did nothing by go to work was torture.
I think any American man, woman, or child who had to choose leaping out of a window 20 stories above the pavement, or being cooked to death, was a torture victim.
How about you Statists? Come on, step up…
The liberal definition of “torture” appears to be “anything the enemies of the USA and progressives find unpleasant, regardless of merit or application”.
You mean, like Generals?
How about mayors?
You REALLY are out of your depth.
Why?
Umm, torture has always been illegal.
And even EIT’s are still legal. Obama has reserved the right to utilize them when needed.