Waterboarding: The New Gonzo Journalism

Gonzo journalism, where you go out and do something for real rather than just reporting on it, is always a seductive route for any journalist ever since Hunter S. Thompson got his head kicked in by some Hells Angels – it shows that you’re both hardcore and not in thrall to some litigation-wary editor. And it appears that the latest gonzo favourite is to try a spot of waterboarding.

“Waterboarding” is a euphemistic term that allows a violent form of torture to sound merely like your gran describing surfing. It involves restraining someone with their head lower than their feet, and pouring water over their sack-covered face – the result is your nose and mouth fill with water and you feel like you’re drowning; Time ran a feature this week on the long-term psychological damage caused by the technique. It’s also emerged in the last couple of days that the CIA used the technique 266 times on two Al-Qaeda prisoners, which won’t please the anti-Guantanamo Obama; two officials in the human rights bit of the Justice Department under George Bush say that leaked memos prove there was no “torture”. This one will run and run.

Anyway, to understand the bewilderment and horror of interrogation by your off-the-leash enemies, or maybe just to have something to high-five people about, Playboy journalist Mike Guy signed up for some waterboarding action this week. He reckons he can do at least 15 seconds. He does about 5. Lame:

More hardcore is Christopher Hitchens, who goes back for more after his first go, though not without psychological cost: “I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia…if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.” We’re unsure what’s worse – the waterboarding, or the terrible trip-hop they seem to have piped into the torture room:

But the hardest of them all is Kaj Larsen, who back in 2007 not only dons the regulation orange Guantanamo boiler suit and shackles, but gets waterboarded over and over for 24 minutes. “That sucked”, was his conclusion after the session ended:

We’re now just waiting for the Jackass or Dirty Sanchez brigades to try it out for some ill-advised political special…

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | April 21, 2009 1:27PM |