A Chicago conservative talk radio host, Erich “Mancow” Muller, decided he’d silence critics of waterboarding once and for all. He would undergo the procedure himself, and then he would be able to confidently convince others that it is not, in fact, torture. Sean Hannity of FOX won’t do it, though challenged by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

Muller came out of it convinced it is torture.

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow said. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back… It was instantaneous… and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face… I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ “

Here’s video of Muller getting waterboarded:

Now, where did Sean Hannity go?

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Former vice-President Dick Cheney, today, dismissed critics who said the policy amounted to the torture of suspected terrorists, Cheney said the methods were “legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do.” He claims President Obama has weakened the country’s ability to combat al Qaeda and other extremists by eliminating them. [CNN]

The former vice president said U.S. intelligence officers “were trying to prevent future killings” and did not commit torture. But he defended the use of “waterboarding,” which the United States has prosecuted as torture in the past, as a valuable tool used on three top al Qaeda figures.

“In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists,” he said.

Cheney asserted the acts were constitutional. He criticized Obama for closing Guantanamo.

Same old stuff from Cheney.

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In a Washington Post-ABC News poll shows President Barack Obama’s first 100 days as President has strong approval from the American public. [MSNBC]

What surprises me is

“About half of all Americans, and 52 percent of independents, said there are circumstances in which the United States should consider employing torture against such suspects.”

I’m in the other half. I’m not in favor of returning to the dark ages.

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Keith Olbermann, of Countdown on MSNBC, offered to put Olbermann’s money where Hannity’s mouth is.

Olbermann followed up his challenge to Hannity on DailyKos. Using Dr. Albert Sabin’s experience in opposing Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, to illustrate a point, Olbermann attacks Hannity’s trivializing of the waterboarding torture technique.

Hannity’s acceptance of Charles Grodin’s offer to endure waterboarding led to Olbermann to offer Hannity:

I will donate $1,000 (one thousand dollars) for every second of water-boarding Hannity endures. We will start the clock the moment the first water is poured on him. The clock will stop when Hannity confesses or begins to shout or scream on a prolonged basis, or the medical supervisor determines he is danger of organ failure.

Interesting. Think Hannity will do it? He is between a rock and a hard place. Put up or shut up. Be interesting to see how it unfolds.

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