Wednesday, July 2, 2008

War Supporter Hitchens Gets 'Waterboarded' and Concludes: 'It's Torture'

Writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens is no blushing wallflower. In contrast to his many anti-war friends, Hitchens vigorously supported the invasion of Iraq, as well as the elimination of Saddam and his regime.

On the matter of U.S.-inflicted torture, however, Hitchens now has a different view, one based on his decision to have himself "waterboarded," a technique that Bush Administration officials have defended in the name of national security.

In an article for Vanity Fair (the link is at Think Progress), Hitchens left no doubt that the procedure was torture. He writes: 

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

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