Christopher Hitchens is getting all sorts of attention today for this Vanity Fair piece, in which he voluntarily undergoes the waterboarding process and comes away convinced it is torture:

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

Hitchens has been a continued outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq. He's simultaneously been a critic of many of the administration's tactics, but his writings have earned the praise of many conservative commentators, including Rush Limbaugh in this weeks' New York Times Magazine cover story:

He is a fan of the columnists Camille Paglia and Thomas Sowell, both of whom he considers honest thinkers. And he is especially impressed by the essays of Christopher Hitchens. "He's misguided sometimes, but when you read him, you finish the whole article."

Now, will some of those same conservatives who crib Hitchens to support their war arguments be open to his real-life experience and subsequent argument against torture? So far, the article is being largely ignored in conservative circles, while liberal bloggers are jumping all over it.


UPDATE: Ana Marie Cox also wonders about the ability to persuade pro-torture types:

It's powerful and distrubing, but I suspect this is not something that will change the pro-torture people's minds ... But I don't think there are many people whose support for waterboarding is seriously based in the belief that it's not torture. They endorse it because it is torture, albeit a one that is superficially less risky and less likely to cause long term damage.