Christopher Hitchens waterboarded himself and said, “believe me, it’s torture.”
Meaning what? It’s worse than a traffic jam? What does he know about torture that allows him to decide what is and isn’t? If Hitchens is trying to determine whether waterboarding is “torture” (which is a ridiculous debate), he needs to subject himself to something that everyone agrees is torture, like getting electrocuted, and then compare that to being waterboarded.
It’s possible he made this observation in the article, which I did not actually read.