"Stupid"? I wish

Interesting. In today's Washington Post, Philip Carter announces, smugly, that Christopher Hitchens is "stupid" for undergoing controlled waterboarding and concluding that it is torture. Why "stupid"? Because

Honestly, I thought we learned in grade school to be a little smarter than this -- that it wasn't necessary to stick a metal fork in the electrical socket to know there was electricity there.

Sure. But Carter doesn't seem to realize that there are still a whole lot of people in this country that, to use his analogy, deny the existence of the electricity. In fact, he doesn't seem aware that he works for a paper that insists waterboarding is just "harsh interrogation". If it's so damned obvious, why is the Post still reluctant to label this administration "torturers"?

I'm not a major Hitchens fan - and it's his stand on the Great War on Terror™ that makes me that (or keeps me from being, I suppose). But Hitch put his body where his mouth was: he used to agree with the Post, and now he doesn't, and says so in print. That's not "stupid", Mr. Carter. That's "finding out the truth, and then telling it" - something journalists are supposed to do.

So maybe you can save some of that venom for your editors, hmmm?