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From C-SPAN's Washington Journal, torture monger Marc Thiessen claims that waterboarding is not torture and that it worked because Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times in one month, thanked his interrogator after the fact and said "you must do this for all the brothers" and that a "moral burden" was lifted from his shoulders to resist talking during his interrogation.

Since it's not likely anyone is going to go find that interrogator who supposedly told him this, there's no way to fact check what he's saying, but given that one, it's hard to imagine anyone thanking an interrogator after they were tortured for a month straight, and two, given the litany of known lies Thiessen told during this forty minute long interview on C-SPAN, there is absolutely no reason to believe this either. Marcy Wheeler has a great post up with the details that are known on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that contradicts what Theissen says here about whether we gained any useful information from torture and how many times these men were waterboarded. The HuffPo has more on this torture lover as well -- Former Bush Speechwriter Wants More Torture.

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February 15, 2010 FOX News

Heather: Looks like torture-lover Liz Cheney's got her talking points from Marc Thiessen warmed up and ready to go for ClusterFox. Our national security is at risk because we're not torturing enough suspected terrorists. Of course she and her ilk don't think it's torture. I want to know when Liz is going to get waterboarded right next to Sean Hannity so they can both tell us what they think of it after it's actually done to them, not someone else. They can bring Limbaugh, Coulter and any of the rest of these right wing yappers that keep telling the public it's not torture as well.

Dave's got a lengthy post on this on the front page but if you want to watch the entire segment from Morning Joe, here it is.

h/t to The Political Carnival for sending the tip on this story this morning.

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From Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly:

I suppose it was only a matter of time before far-right voices started criticizing President Obama for having too much success killing terrorists. Here's former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, writing, "Dead Terrorists Tell No Tales."

[...]

I see. The conservative line for the better part of a year is that President Obama isn't doing enough to go after terrorists. Reality shows the exact opposite is true, but for the right, this is an inconvenient detail best ignored.

If Thiessen's piece is any indication, however, the argument is now shifting. President Obama is doing too much to go after terrorists, and is taking out too many bad guys before they can be captured and tortured.

I can see the campaign slogans now: "Vote GOP: Obama kills too many terrorists." Read on...

Transcript via Nexis Lexis.

O'REILLY: "Impact" segment tonight, a former speechwriter for President Bush, Mark Thiessen says that President Obama's use of drone missiles to terrorize and kill al Qaeda may be counterproductive in some areas. Mr. Thiessen is the author of the bestselling book, "Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack."

He joins us now from Washington.

All right, now look, I've been a big supporter of President's Obama's drone missile. And the CIA is obviously executing this very, very well. Wiped out a lot of al Qaeda, a lot of Taliban in Pakistan. We've dropped a few in other places in the world. And you are saying not so fast. So explain it?

MARK THIESSEN, FORMER CHIEF SPEECHWRITER FOR PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, predators are an important tool on the war on terror, but the problem is that Obama is escalating the predator attacks, at the same time that he has eliminated one of the most important intelligence capabilities we have, the CIA's program to detain, capture and detain and interrogate terrorist leaders. Dead terrorists cannot tell you their plans for new attacks. So if you vaporize a terrorist with a predator strike you're vaporizing all the intelligence in his head that we could be getting by interrogating him.

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Campbell Brown thinks it's a "great debate" to use chickenhawk torture apologist Marc Thiessen's article at the National Revue on Obama's Cairo speech as the premise for this segment: President Obama undercut the military in his speech to the Muslim world.

What's next, Campbell? You going to ask your guests when Obama quit beating his wife?

About the only good thing about watching this was getting to see Michael Ware call a chickenhawk out to his face.

WARE: (INAUDIBLE) your article but the problem is you're not talking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars evening dinner. You're talking to the Arab or the Muslim world.

THIESSEN: Yes.

WARE: And to be honest, they don't feel terribly liberated by the U.S. military. Now, you and I might have views of that.

THIESSEN: Well, that's why the president has a responsibility to say something.

WARE: You and I may have our view of that. But when there's American tanks sitting in the Arab streets, when they see the killings in Afghanistan from our bombings, though they're not intended, that's not how they feel. When they see what happened in Abu Ghraib --

THIESSEN: The vast majority of Afghans support Americans --

WARE: You got to understand -- you got to understand, Marc, I mean, it might feel different in the ivory towers in the Capitol Hill and the Pentagon. But on the streets -- on the streets --

THIESSEN: Excuse me, I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan four times in each of those countries so I know what it's like in the Arab streets. I've been there.

WARE: Oh, I'm sorry. You spend how much time in Iraq?

THIESSEN: Oh, listen --

WARE: No, no, no, how much time, Marc? How much time, Marc?

THIESSEN: I've traveled -- oh, I know you lived there.

WARE: Right, I lived there for six years, right? I know the problem that President Obama is trying to address.

THIESSEN: Yes.

WARE: And I can tell you, I've spent more time in the trenches with your troops than I can guarantee you have. And I'm speaking for your soldiers.

THIESSEN: Michael, let me tell you something.

WARE: And I'm telling you, they don't need platitudes. They need a solution.

THIESSEN: I was under fire too. I was in the Pentagon in September 11, 2001 with our troops, so don't tell me about being under fire with the troops.

So in the chickenhawk's view, being at the Pentagon on 9-11 is the equivalent of being under fire with the troops in Iraq. That's rich. Why Brown thought subjecting Ware to this nonsense was a good idea is beyond me. He didn't seem too thrilled about it when it was over, either.

Transcript of the entire segment from LexisNexis below the fold.

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From C-SPAN's Q&A April 26, 2009. Christopher Hitchens responds to Marc Thiessen's assertion that because Hitchens allowed himself to be waterboarded, it could not be torture.