Patrick Cusworth, a public affairs consultant and committee member of Hornsey and Wood Green Conservative Association, says Hague should pressure America to stop the practice of waterboarding.
Despite disagreeing with him on virtually any subject you could mention, I must confess to being a fan of the contrarian author/journalist Christopher Hitchens. No matter how controversial the subject of his polemics, I regularly find it impossible not to be challenged by his arguments. Perhaps most impressively of all, he is also one of the few journalists who are prepared to put their own convictions to the test – an all-too-rare quality in the champagne socialist world of journalism dominated by the likes of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Polly Toynbee. In my opinion, it is this exact quality that is the reason that Hitchens’ latest article for Vanity Fair has caused such a stir amongst all sides of the media.
Writing in the online American journal Slate at the end of last year, Hitchens made the suggestion that “extreme interrogation” does not necessarily constitute “outright torture”. On publication of these comments, the former member of SWP pre-runner International Socialism and now apologist-in-chief for the war and current occupation of Iraq was accused of supporting the use of “waterboarding” as a means of interrogating suspects of terrorism. Challenged by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter to be put through the experience himself, Hitchens agreed to be placed in the hands of the elite U.S. Special Forces team skilled in the advanced form of training SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape).
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