Christopher Hitchens tries waterboarding

Christopher Hitchens, polemicist, author and TV pundit, has subjected himself to a bout of "waterboarding", the hideous form of torture known to have been perpetrated by US forces in Iraq. His decision to undergo this ordeal was prompted by an article he wrote for the online magazine Slate, in which he attempted to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of "extreme interrogation" and "outright torture". From this, his critics inferred that since Hitchens believed America troops did not stoop to the latter, he must think waterboarding - best summarised as enforced partial drowning - fell into the former category.

This led to a commission from Vanity Fair magazine to put it to the test. In the August issue, he recounts how he was lashed tightly to a sloping board with three layers of towels around his head. He wrote: "In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose... I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and - as you might expect - inhale in turn."

That, he says, "brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, flooded more with sheer panic than with water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal" and felt the "unbelievable relief" of being pulled upright.

The "official lie" about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it "simulates the feeling of drowning". In fact, "you are drowning - or rather, being drowned". He concludes by rehearsing the arguments for and against torture generally, but his revised view of waterboarding is summarised in the title of his Vanity Fair article: "Believe me, it's torture".