Chicago radio “shock jock” Erich “Mancow” Muller took his listeners’ advice and voluntarily underwent waterboarding on May 22 and reluctantly concluded it was “torture.” Mancow had earlier pooh-poohed the conclusion that waterboarding was torture (though the U.S. government prosecuted as war criminals some Japanese soldiers who had conducted waterboarding against U.S. soldiers, and even court-martialed a U.S. soldier who had engaged in it in Vietnam). Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens also volunteered to be waterboarded last year after being challenged to do so.
In an on-air confrontation earlier this week with co-host Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends on the Fox News Channel, former Minnesota Governor and Navy Seal Jesse Ventura had argued it was torture. Ventura had undergone waterboarding as part of his military SERE training.
