The Duck of Minerva

If Hitchens Says It, It Must be True

by Charli Carpenter

14 July 2008, 0522 EDT

Geez, get off the grid for ten days or so, come back to find Zimbabwe on the verge of civil war, the International Criminal Court indicting Bashir on charges of genocide (now that is a shocker), the zombies overtaking Norway, and Christopher Hitchens reversing himself on whether waterboarding is torture. (Makes a big difference in perspective whether you undergo the procedure yourself.)

My favorite quote from his new expose in Vanity Fair, aptly entitled “Believe Me, It’s Torture”: “You’re not being boarded, you’re being watered.”

Hat tip to Hank at Eclectic Meanderings.

That’s all…

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

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