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Looks like Mr. Glazed-Chicken Duncan Hunter is at it again with defending our torture of prisoners. I don't know what else Chris Matthews thought he was going to get from the likes of Hunter given his past appearance on his show where he called detainee abuse "left wing rubbish". Now he's claiming that waterboarding isn't torture, and it makes our Marines tough! I think Jesse Ventura would disagree with him.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz did a pretty good job later in the segment when she was allowed to get a word in edge-wise and took Hunter to task for his claim that the government got any information from KSM after he was waterboarded.

Media Matters has a good run down of where that latest talking point came from and debunks it here-- Following Wash. Post article, conservative media advance falsehood that CIA documents prove interrogation techniques worked. Unfortunately since so much of the segment turned into a pissing contest between Hunter and Matthews over whether waterboarding is torture or not, those points were barely discussed.

Of course the fact that they have to make things up to justify the use of torture is no surprise since it doesn't work. It's meant to extract confessions and to get the prisoner to tell the torturer what they want to hear, not to get at the truth. But that's not going to stop the likes of Dick Cheney and Duncan Hunter from lying about it or the media from giving them a format to do it.

Nothing, it would seem, pleases the Republican mind more than regurgitating demonstrably false and shockingly mean-spirited talking points. So Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign must been ecstatic to score a twofer last week. In a single sentence, Ensign not only faithfully reproduced the GOP's "Club Gitmo" talking point, but resuscitated the old Republican claim that there is no health care crisis.

Ensign's back-handed jab at the American health care system came even as he was insisting the Guantanamo Bay detention center needed to remain open. Following hot on the heels of his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) comment that terror suspects "wouldn't be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn't have the tropical breezes blowing through," Ensign claimed Gitmo was to-die for:

Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate.

"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said.

That Ensign praised the Club Med atmosphere at Gitmo comes as no surprise. John Boehner (R-OH), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and Dick Cheney are just a few of the legion of Republicans who lauded Guantanamo as "more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp" and "if anything, it's too nice."

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Rep. Steve King on Washington Journal April 21, 2009. I think King has been "palling around" with Duncan Hunter who made the remarks about the prisoners at Gitmo having their orange-glazed chicken.

King: There have never been prisoners that have been treated as good as that. They're in air conditioning. They set the temperature. They get a choice of nine meals off of a menu per day. There was no waterboarding that took place in Gitmo nor in the Western hemisphere contrary to these reports that keep coming out. There are two hundred and forty of the worst of the worst down there and if they are released there will be innocent people killed. We know there is torture taking place on political prisoners in some of the countries in South America. That also includes Cuba and under Castro and that is an outrage. But what the Americans have done is treated these prisoners with the greatest deference any prisoners have ever been treated. And I think if you could see what's going on, the attacks on our guards every day down there. Every day there are guards attacked and the worst we can do to the worst of them is limit their outdoor exercise to two hours a day.

When the next caller asks him if he's in denial, he clarifies his statement with this:

King: I said it didn't happen in the Western hemisphere sir....It happened. It just didn't happen in the Western hemisphere. Three of them.

I'd like to know just where Rep. King is admitting the waterboarding took place.

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Duncan Hunter went on Hardball and criticized the New York Times editorial on detainee abuse as "left wing rubbish". Janice Karpinski would disagree with Hunter's assertion that the blame for the abuse did not go all the way to the top.

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Oh boy, where to begin? Tweety asks Duncan Hunter about John McCain's chances in the general election after a new NY Times poll came out saying that Obama has a 13 pt lead: 52-39. Hunter says McCain was way down before and while not eloquent, he knows how to spell the word "win" and his foreign policy background is a winning issue. Typical surrogate talk and then Matthews brought up the fact that the Rick Davis-led campaign never focused on Iraq, but instead hit the very petty, low brow personal attack points that we've seen many times before.

Matthews: ....all these diversions they've used. The fact that he might be anti-American...this whole thing about socialist. Joe the plumber. What's that got to do with the security issue you say?

Hunter: I think John is wrong in that case. I think he has been tested. He was tested on Iraq. And here was a guy with great teeth, great speaking style, excellent politician and a superb debater, but when it came to the major issues...

Matthews:...we just heard from Congressman Hunter that the winning piece of this man's vocabulary, the winning piece of his resume is that he has a nice smile, he has good teeth. Is that your assessment of Barack Obama, he's the first African American with a real shot to be President of the United States and is 13 points ahead of his Republican rival, that he has good teeth?

Hunter: Also a good debater and very eloquent.

Sounds like Duncan Hunter is describing an award winning horse. Even Matthews caught on and when he called Hunter on the "teeth" remark, Hunter didn't try to say he misspoke, only that Obama is a good debater and very eloquent.