Rhode Island Rep. Offers to Waterboard Bush for Charity

It turns out the waterboarding-for-charity idea is a popular sport these days.

Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann had a very public feud over who was going to be waterboarded and for how long -- proceeds of which would go to charity. Wasn't at all funny, but sadly, it sure was good cable and blog fodder, no? Well now we've got a Rhode Island lawmaker offering to pay $100 a second for someone to endure the simulated drowning -- and that someone is former President Bush.

Democratic state Rep. Rod Driver has sent letters via certified mail to Bush, Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking them to be waterboarded for charity. Those three have said they do not consider waterboarding torture.

"You must be confident that waterboarding is not torture," Driver wrote, according to The Westerly Sun in Rhode Island. "So I expect you will be willing to do what Sean Hannity has volunteered to do - experience it yourself. I promise to give $100 to the charity of your choice for each second you personally tolerate waterboarding."

Driver ran for Congress in 2002 as a Republican, then in 2006 as an independent, and is now a Democrat. He voted for independent Ralph Nader in last year's presidential election. Driver told the Sun that he would "confess to the attacks on 9/11, the sinking of Lusitania [in 1915], or anything else they want to hear to get them to stop" if he had to undergo the interrogation technique, and he's in full support of prosecuting everybody even remotely involved in it.

"It's paradoxical to say 'Don't prosecute low-level people because they were just following orders,'" he said.

As to whether he's gotten a response from Bush, Cheney and Rice, well, he'll probably be waiting a good long while for that. "I wish they would take me up on it," he said.

While he's waiting on that, what d'ya say we stop making a game out of waterboarding?