Lawyers Participate in Artist’s Coney Island ‘Waterboard Thrill Ride’

Guantanamo/Detainees

Lawyers Participate in Artist’s Coney Island ‘Waterboard Thrill Ride’

Posted Aug 18, 2008, 11:52 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Artist Steve Powers hopes he reached people who aren’t familiar with waterboarding at his Coney Island “Waterboard Thrill Ride.”

For just $1, park-goers were able to peer through bars and see motorized mannequins convulse while water was poured on their faces, the Washington Post reports. A SpongeBob SquarePants figure painted on the outside of the exhibit proclaimed, "It don't Gitmo better!"

The exhibit, sponsored by a public arts organization called Democracy in America, closed Friday. It has been moved to the Park Avenue Armory.

Powers and some lawyers underwent real waterboarding in a private room at the amusement park Friday. “One woman looked fragile and tiny, her feet kicking helplessly in platform shoes as water filled her eyes and nose,” the newspaper reports.

Karin Kunstler Goldman, an assistant New York state attorney general, told the Post the experience was terrifying. "The fact that it took place near roller coasters and cotton candy sends an important message: We here can engage in frivolity and fun at a time when in our name this is happening to people somewhere else," she said.

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Posted by J.D. - 3 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 9 hours, 33 minutes ago

Hey Ms. Goldman, I think there’s a better message: Everyone can enjoy their cotton candy BECAUSE terrorists that would slit the park-goers’ throats in a heartbeat are being taken out with the aid of interrogation.

And if you, an elderly lawyer, can survive waterboarding, I think there’s an argument that such a procedure is inadequate when it comes to battlefield-captured, war-hardened jihadists.

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