So, for those of you willing to be “tortured” by a training procedure used on our own Navy SEALs, allow me to personally invite you to my soundstages in Louisiana for a little scientific experiment.  First, waterboarding. Next up, you can pick any of the torture methods from the Al-Qaeda book you like. 

May I recommend “Eye Removal” or “Blowtorch to the Skin”?  Those are two of my favorites.

After that, you can look at the camera and tell America that waterboarding is torture and that Dick Cheney is evil for using it to save YOUR life.  Deal?

This week the Obama administration is going to give us another dose of the “America is evil” evidence by releasing photos and other visual evidence that shows Bush, Cheney and others allowing rogue CIA agents to do terrible things to helpless Muslims who were innocently targeted and hustled off to Guantanamo. 

This has made me think of other images of atrocity that I would actually like to see to remind me of our enemy’s brutality. 

On September 11th, 2001 numerous people plummeted 1200+ feet out of the world trade center because they determined that dying of an impact on concrete after falling about ¼ mile to earth at a speed of 32 feet per second squared (the speed of gravity for those of you who aren’t into physics) was preferable to burning to death in the stricken towers. 

I’m not suggesting that it would be nice to see pictures of the splattered remains of Americans on the downtown New York sidewalk but it would remind American’s that the brutality suffered by our citizens that day was infinitely worse than the fate suffered by two avowed terrorists who got some water poured over their heads. I bet the pictures of the bodies on pavement would be a lot more dramatic as well than pictures of wet middle easterners. In fact, I have some pictures of a wet cat after a bath that are much more dramatic and brutal looking than the water boarding “centerfold” spread we will see this week. 

Since the water boarding has been proven to prevent many more 9/11 type casualties, maybe the news media and the general public that gets their information from them would realize how silly it is to harangue our intelligence service personal and Bush administration lawyers over the issue of water boarding anymore. Having brutal pictures from 9/11 released would surely put all of this controversy in perspective. 

One of the attacks that the water boarding prevented was a plot to detonate bombs in subway trains in tunnels under New York’s rivers which would have flooded the city’s underground network of subway tunnels and killed many thousands of people. Another attack was planned that involved flying a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles with results similar to 9/11. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It must be true because we don’t get to see 9/11 footage on TV anymore. The mainstream media must think it’s inconveniently truthful.

“Today, he suffers blinding headaches and has permanent brain damaage. He has an excruciating sensitivity to sounds, hearing what others do not. The slightest noise drives him nearly insane. In the last two years alone, he has experienced about 200 seizures.

“But physical pain is a passing thing. The enduring torment is the taunting reminder that darkness encroaches. Already he cannot picture his mother’s face or recall his father’s name. Gradually his past, like his future, eludes him.”

In his editorial, Mr. Margulies describes how Abu Zubaydah was water-boarded: “They strapped him to an inverted board and poured water over his covered nose and mouth to produce the sensation of suffocation and insipient panic. Eighty three times. I leave it to others to debate whether we should call this torture”, he writes.  “I am content with the self evident truth that it was wrong.”

The CIA did all this to Zubaydah, Marglies concludes,  “because they believed he was evil”. Because they believed he was evil. Because they believed he was evil. When I had calmed down a bit after reading this, I typed out a letter to The Times which they printed. Here’s what the letter said:

“She looks into his eyes. Hers are filled with terror. The heat is unbearable. Her skin is beginning to blister. He reaches out and takes her hand. His hand has a deep gash in it from the shattered glass of the window he has helped to smash. ‘Hold on tight to me,’ he whispers. ‘Keep your eyes closed. Don’t look down.’ Together, they step through the jagged opening of a high floor of the World Trade Center. On the sidewalk below, people shriek in horror.

I don’t know the young woman’s name, but I do know that, like Abu Zabadah, she can’t picture her mother’s face either.”

Orson Bean’s latest novel, M@il For Mikey, is published by Barricade Books

But one point in the movie bears noting–the use and applause for waterboarding.

The story of “Last House” is that of a girl and her friend tortured by a gang of criminals. The girl (Sara Paxton, who “graduated” from kids’ show “Darcy’s Wild Life” to snuff-porn–talk about regressing)  is raped and left for dead.  When her parents discover that the people they welcomed into their house are the perpetrators, they take revenge.

Among the revenge mechanisms the parents employ to kill these thugs is waterboarding.  They waterboard one of the thugs in the kitchen sink (and do something else far more disturbing–a stunt that criminals committed in the William Devane vehicle, “Rolling Thunder“).  I watched the audience rightfully applaud this.  The guy was a brutal killer and accessory to rape.  He deserved it.  It’s the true justice we rarely see in our clogged, broken “justice” system.  And I remember that the audience also applauded when Wesley Snipes waterboarded a (non-Muslim) terrorist hijacker in the airplane toilet in “Passenger 57.”  He deserved it, too, and Snipes was trying to save the people on the flight.

So, I ask myself (and you), why do Hollywood liberals applaud the use of waterboarding on a criminal thug who only tortured and/or murdered two women and on a non-Muslim airplane hijacker, yet it’s not okay to do it to men  like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who murdered 3,000 Americans and knows of future plans to snuff out many more?

Yeah, I know, it’s “only a movie.”

But if it’s so bad and so noxious to Hollywood libs, maybe they should try to take it out of movies on which they make oodles of money, the way they’re being urged to do with smoking.

And if it’s so bad, why do American audiences cheer when criminal thug murderers get deservedly waterboarded onscreen?  They cheer because they support it.  This is what America wants us to do to save lives.

And I say, before President Obama closes Gitmo, let’s install a special “Passenger 57″ airplane toilet (and a “Last House on the Left” kitchen sink).  We can send Wesley Snipes there to do his dirty work and work off the taxes he evaded (for which he was prosecuted).

That’s a criminal sentence I’d support.