NEW YORK -- Keith Olbermann's offer for a donation if Sean Hannity undergoes waterboarding is off the table, the money gone instead to radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller's charity of choice after Mancow's disquieting experience with the interrogation technique.
Muller said Wednesday he volunteered to be waterboarded last week to prove that the controversial technique isn't torture. Instead, he said the experience showed he was wrong.
"I thought I was going to die," he said.
Waterboarding has been a hot topic on talk TV and radio the last several weeks. The liberal Olbermann of MSNBC contends it's torture; the conservative Hannity of Fox News Channel says it's not. Olbermann leaped on it when Hannity said on the air last month that he'd be waterboarded for charity.
Muller did it in his Chicago studio last Friday. He said it was worse than drowning, something he nearly experienced as a boy before being rescued. Muller went on Olbermann's MSNBC show Tuesday to talk about his experience, after Olbermann pledged $10,000 to Veterans of Valor, an organization formed by Iraq War veteran Klay South to help injured veterans.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I was laughing about this, that it was a stupid radio thing," Muller told Olbermann. "I thought I could go 30 seconds. I'll hold my breath. Big deal, they'll sprinkle water. It is a big deal. It's torture."
Muller said Wednesday that he'd have no qualms about seeing waterboarding used if it would protect his young daughters. Whether it should be used by the United States as an interrogation technique is a question he said he'd leave to others.
Muller, a former Fox News Channel contributor, said he talked to his friend Hannity about the experience and had no insights on whether Hannity planned to go through with his offer, or even whether the offer was serious or made in jest during a conversation with Charles Grodin last month on "Hannity." There's no evidence Hannity has spoken publicly about his plans since.
Neither he nor a Fox News spokeswoman immediately replied to requests for comment on Wednesday.
"I don't know how Hannity is rationalizing this, but externally, his inability to live up to his promise pretty much speaks for itself," Olbermann told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Plus, he is now less informed on the subject of waterboarding than is Erich 'Mancow' Muller."
