Let’s start with a hypothetical person, called George. George is hypothetical. George says “[Waterboarding][] is not torture.”
[waterboarding]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
George is entitled to his opinion, but he’s wrong.
Let’s create a hypothetical situation for our hypothetical George to be in. Let’s say that George, through some ugly string of coincidences, finds himself captured by some very bad people, *”strapped to a board and tipped back or lowered into a body of water until he believed that drowning was imminent”* ((quote taken from the Wikipedia article linked above. Not that Wikipedia is necessarily the authority on such things, but I don’t think that anyone can argue with that definition.))
When George is eventually released, what do you think that his opinion on waterboarding will be now? Will he still think that it is not torture?
That was a hypothetical question, but feel free to answer it anyway. Comments validate me.
I don’t think I’m going to be the shouting general in the room with the guys with headsets. That’s a thankless job really, and I don’t think I could see me in a moustache. And besides, they all suffer from hormone imbalances and want to nuke everything, until the geeky bespectacled scientist in the white coat suggests a far more constructive and pacifistic course of action. And then the general has to eat humble pie. And I prefer chicken.
I could do a George Bailey, and stay at home and organise rubber drives and such like. Be a bit of a local hero, just do odd jobs around the community and be a good guy. However, that would require me to take some sort of initiative, which would probably mean that I would lose my job, as that kind of thing is not allowed around here.