Graydon Carter, famous editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, asked writer Christopher Hitchens if he would agree to go through water-boarding and then write an article about it for the July issue of the magazine. Hitchens is a pretty sick opinion writer and does a lot of good stuff for Slate, where you may have run into his stuff. Water-boarding, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a form of torture that's currently on the menu at Guantanamo Bay. They basically strap you down to something so that you're lying on your back, put something over your head (a mask, a bag, whatever) and pour water into your breathing passages so that you're pretty much drowning. Some people like to think that this isn't a form of torture, and the VF article is his response to that.
The site won't allow me to embed the video, but you should really click on this link and check it out (it's not long). Hitchens is given two balls, one in each of his hands, to release his grip from if he feels untolerable pressure or pain. I thought it was amazing how quickly he not only relesed his grip but flung the balls out of his hands, when the prisoners at Guantanamo are probably being subjected to this for hours at a time, if they don't die first. Watch the video and then tell me, do you think it's safe to call this practice "torture?" And do you think it's justifiable that they're doing this to people we're holding without any sort of hearing or trial?
