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Joe Scarborough is back at it again, apologizing for torture and telling lies about whether it works. Every time I think this show can't get much worse, I turn it on like I did this morning and realize I'm wrong. This had to be one of the more disgusting segments I've watched in a while, and that's saying a lot for this show. Scarborough and his panel members, David Ignatius and Jon Meacham, did their best to help revise history and help Scarborough play torture apologist while discussing the new film coming out this month, Zero Dark Thirty.

Glenn Greenwald has more on the problems with the premise of this movie: Zero Dark Thirty: new torture-glorifying film wins raves:

Earlier this year, the film "Zero Dark Thirty", which purports to dramatize the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, generated substantial political controversy. It was discovered that CIA and White House officials had met with its filmmakers and passed non-public information to them - at exactly the same time that DOJ officials were in federal court resisting transparency requests from media outlets and activist groups on the ground that it was all classified.

With its release imminent, the film is now garnering a pile of top awards and virtually uniform rave reviews. What makes this so remarkable is that, by most accounts, the film glorifies torture by claiming - falsely - that waterboarding and other forms of coercive interrogation tactics were crucial, even indispensable in finding bin Laden.In the New York Times on Sunday, Frank Bruni wrote: "I'm betting that Dick Cheney will love the new movie 'Zero Dark Thirty.'" That's because "'enhanced interrogation techniques' like waterboarding are presented as crucial" to finding America's most hated terrorist. [...]

The claim that waterboarding and other torture techniques were necessary in finding bin Laden was first made earlier this year by Jose Rodriguez, the CIA agent who illegally destroyed the agency's torture tapes, got protected from prosecution by the DOJ, and then profited off this behavior by writing a book. He made the same claim as "Zero Dark Thirty" regarding the role played by torture in finding bin Laden.

That caused two Senators who are steadfast loyalists of the CIA - Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein and Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin - to issue statements definitively debunking this assertion. Even the CIA's then-Director, Leon Panetta, made clear that those techniques played no role in finding bin Laden. An FBI agent central to the bin Laden hunt said the same.

What this film does, then, is uncritically presents as fact the highly self-serving, and factually false, claims by the CIA that its torture techniques were crucial in finding bin Laden. Put another way, it propagandizes the public to favorably view clear war crimes by the US government, based on pure falsehoods.

And Mediaite's Tommy Christopher did a nice job of breaking down just how dishonest this Morning Joe segment was: Joe Scarborough Claims Zero Dark Thirty Torture Scene True, Screenwriter And Facts Disagree:

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As Think Progress noted this weekend, Mitt Romney's attacks on the Obama administration's response to the attack on our embassy in Libya are falling apart as more and more information comes out about just what happened and who had what information when, but never mind that over at Fox. They're still going to beat this dead horse for Willard as we saw Mike Huckabee do during his show this Saturday.

How Mitt Romney’s Latest Attack On Libya Is Falling Apart:

Mitt Romney has recently made the administration’s response to the attacks in Libya a centerpiece of his campaign. Romney and his campaign allege that the Obama administration “covered-up” the facts about the attacks for their political benefit. Romney’s core message is that: 1. The attacks were linked to al Qaeda, and 2. The attacks had nothing to do with an anti-Muslim video on YouTube. Here’s an excerpt from Romney’s major foreign policy address on October 8:

The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long.

A new report this morning from the LA Times casts serious doubt on Romney’s claims:

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

…[I]n in Benghazi, witnesses said members of the group that raided the U.S. mission specifically mentioned the video, which denigrated the prophet Muhammad.

The LA Times bolsters earlier reports by the New York Times and Reuters. (The involvement of al Qaeda is a complex issue and the attack, if not ordered by al Qaeda, may have involved individuals sympathetic to or loosely affiliated with the group.)

A peice in the Washington Post by David Ignatius reveals that the adminstration’s initial statements citing the role of the video were based on talking points provided by the CIA:

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.”

The article by David Ignatuis came out well before Mike Huckabee's show went on the air Saturday, but they chose to completely ignore it. Expect more of the same over at Fox in the upcoming weeks where they'll continue attack the Obama administration over this made up controversy right up to election day and then we'll never hear another word about it from them after that.

In the mean time, we're also treated to follow ups like this one where HuckaJesus brought on Bush spokespuppet Dana Perino to weigh in on whether the Obama administration is being honest with the public about the attack. After coming to the podium to carry water for the Bush administration, I guess she knows a thing or two about lying to the public. Why anyone thinks she's got anything worth adding to this debate is beyond me, but it's upside down world at Fox, so this is what they put on the air -- Dana Perino -- the supposed bastion of journalistic integrity when it comes to administrations telling the public the truth. Lord help us.

Video below the fold.

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Here we go again. Earlier in the week we had Joe Klein repeating this nonsense. Now it was Chuck Todd filling in for Chris Matthews on his weekend show, making the claim that the Obama campaign is somehow “Swiftboating” Mitt Romney.

TODD: Dan, we know that this is, it feels right out of the 2004 Karl Rove playbook. In fact I think Charlie Cook wrote earlier this week that Karl Rove ought to get royalties from the Obama campaign on what they're doing. Essentially, they're Swiftboating Romney.

And Dan Rather agreed with him. I don't expect any better out of Gloria Borger or Kathleen Parker who will gladly repeat Republican talking points ad nauseum, but after what the Bush campaign did to him while the Swiftboat attacks were going on against John Kerry, you'd think we'd get a little more honesty out of Rather, and some push back as to why what the Obama campaign is doing with the Bain attacks is not the same as the attacks on Kerry's military record. Instead he was happy to play along and help Todd compare the attack ads to Karl Rove as well.

Kathleen Parker goes on to carry some water for the dishonest so-called “fact checker” Glenn Kessler over at the Washington Post who lied and claimed there was nothing to the attacks on Bain Capital, even discounting the other reporting from journalists at his same paper. For some background on why no one should be calling him a “fact checker” on anything, I'd recommend reading Marcy Wheeler's post about him from earlier this week before anyone else holds him up as some “journalist” who can be counted on to tell the truth: Yesterday’s Some-Sayers Have Become Today’s Fact-Checkers. Just go read the whole thing but she's got a very long list going back to the George W. Bush years on how Kessler's been doing this same sort of thing for a very long time now. All things are not equal when you have one side continually just making stuff up out of whole cloth and the other side attacking you for things that are true.

And all of them on the panel this week were completely dismissive of what a nasty, dishonest, mean spirited presidential campaign Mitt Romney has run from day one, but oh my goodness, don't dare let the Obama campaign run any nasty ads attacking Mitt Romney, or voters might not think he's a nice guy any more and there's going to be blow back. Funny how that only seems to apply to one side with our Villagers in the beltway media.

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The panel on The Chris Matthews Show this weekend engaged in a debate that we've been hearing all over by the media, which is whether the Obama campaign would be better off portraying Mitt Romney as a flip flopper who has been on every side of the issues, or as a "severe conservative" which is the angle it appears they have chosen to take now.

Most of them agreed that the flip flopper angle could actually help Mitt Romney because it allows voters to believe that if elected, Romney might actually govern as some sort of "moderate." Sadly what is ignored during this debate is just what the media defines as "moderate" these days, which has moved so far to the right it's absolutely ridiculous. Just because Romney once professed to be pro-choice, or because he supported a center-right health care plan in his state, that doesn't mean he did not govern as a conservative in Massachusetts.

And other than Chris Matthews who hinted at it when talking about how John Boehner has been reined in by his base as Speaker of the House and forced to move to the extreme right, the panel mainly ignored the fact that if we're unfortunate enough to have Romney elected, his base and the Congress are going to keep a tight rein on him and he's going to govern from the far right no matter how much he tries to soften some of his rhetoric on the campaign trail.

The Republican Party has purged anyone that could remotely be considered an actual moderate from their ranks a long time ago. Romney has been running as an extremist in order to placate his base and get through the primary race. I cannot picture him pushing back at that base or at the extremists in his party in the Congress if he's elected and has any desire to be reelected.

The arguments about the flip flopper benefiting him only work if you ignore what's happened to the Republican Party and the constraints that would be put on him as president by his party were he elected.

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As Digby noted, "Bush flack" Torie Clarke was on This Week touting the tired line about companies not hiring because of "uncertainty" over regulations and trade agreements, which Paul Krugman attempted to shoot down in this segment. I'm glad Krugman was there to respond to this nonsense, but I think using economist's terms like "excess capacity" isn't always particularly helpful when trying to get the average lay person like myself who's not an economist to understand the gist of his argument.

Companies are not hiring because there is not a demand for their products because we've got too many people out of work right now. Until we turn that around, those companies are not going to start hiring. And we're not doing anything to protect American jobs, but of course the free-traders like Clarke are never going to acknowledge that these horrid trade agreements we've had for decades have caused nothing but a race to the bottom on wages and the only jobs they have been creating are ones overseas and very few here at home. She was allowed a free pass on that here as well.

Sadly as Krugman rightfully pointed out here, there seems to be very little interest by our politicians to do anything meaningful to create jobs here at home. And just as sadly the only discussion allowed by our corporate media on job creation includes the tired talking points we heard out of Clarke here and not the words outsourcing, race to the bottom, fair trade, tariffs, wage and labor protections or equating patriotism to caring about employing American citizens. And until we break up these media monopolies with the same interests as these multi-nationals with a race to the bottom on wages, I don't expect we will.

Transcript via ABC News below the fold.

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Apparently some of the "very serious" people in Republican politics have been privately urging Jeb Bush to run for president in 2012, and thus the topic of The Chris Matthews Show's meter question for this week: "Is Jeb Bush the strongest Republican candidate in 2012?" The "Matthews Meter" regulars are split 6 to 6.

It doesn't say much for the Republican field of candidates this year if insiders are pushing for a man whose last name should be mud as their best chance to win back the presidency in 2012. Apparently Bush isn't interested in running anytime soon. I guess he's hoping the media will continue with their turd-polishing exercise of trying to wipe our collective memories clean of how awful of a president his brother was so he can run in 2016. Chris Matthews thinks he could be pushed into running in 2012.

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Chris Matthews has a lengthy debate with his panel on the decision by the Democrats and the Obama administration to push forward with immigration reform and Chris Matthews doesn't understand why the Democrats would choose to push this issue before the mid-term elections. His Matthews Meter question is "Immigration a Smart Issue for Obama This Year?" and ten of his regulars say no and two say yes.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line gave his take on this:

The move comes amid signs that Dem leaders are moving forward more rapidly than expected with immigration reform, upending the political calculus of both parties heading into the midterms. By moving forward, Dems risk exacerbating the anger of the Tea Party brigade and alienating white swing voters, but they also energize a key portion of their base. The move also forces Republicans to choose between angering the Tea Partiers and alienating Latinos.

Obama has now pushed the Arizona issue to the front burner, perhaps forcing a more serious national conversation over it. Interesting.

Andrew Sullivan is the one person on the panel that thinks this is a good move on the part of Democrats. After what we just saw come out of Arizona with their new "show me your papers" law, I think he may be right. By moving the debate to immigration the Obama administration is going to force them to defend this over reach. I would hope that what Arizona is doing would be seen as offensive to anyone but the far right. There's nothing that's going to happen to get these teabaggers any more worked up than they are now already. The Republicans are upping the crazy and as Sullivan pointed out being their own worst enemies by siding with the extremists in their party and Obama is putting them a box with this move.

I'm waiting to see if they make the situation even worse if we get another Supreme Court nominee who is a minority and they act as badly as they did with Sotomayor before the midterm elections. The GOP cannot afford to lose every minority voter in this country but they look like they don't mind with the way they've been acting for the last year. I guess we'll find out shortly as we see how the politics play out in this debate.

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After discussing this segment from last weeks show Kathleen Parker and Joe Klein: Tea Party fringe groups are a national security threat; FOX and the Becks are acting seditiously David Ignatius decides to carry some water for Sarah Palin and her fellow hate talkers over at ClusterFox.

Ignatius: Well I…no. If the Republican Party is Fox News and Glenn Beck it will lose in perpetuity. This is not a majority movement. I get worried about words like sedition because I love brother Joe, but it seems to me that implies that there’s impermissible speech; speech that is so extreme, so inflammatory that it really shouldn’t allow it…

Matthews: How about reload?

Ignatius: … in the debate.

Matthews: How about Sarah Palin saying it’s time to reload?

Ignatius: Well, a lot of the things that she says strike me as outrageous. These people make their money being outrageous and Sarah Palin’s now joined that group. But that doesn’t mean that it’s dangerous to the republic. I mean look, our national ideology in some level is Libertarianism. I mean, you know liberals and conservatives agree, don’t tread on me. Don’t take away my freedoms to speak, to do what I want. That’s who we are as a people. These people are expressing an extreme view about it. It doesn’t worry me a lot.

Sorry David, but there are limits on free speech whether you're willing to acknowledge that or not. These Villagers sure like to protect their own even when they recognize that they're completely over the top and out of control. How pathetic is it that he also acknowledges that people who work for an organization that has the word "news" in it are being paid to be "outrageous" and representing an "extreme view" and he doesn't blink an eye about it?

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Chris Matthews actually asks his panel if the country is going to be feeling some nostalgia for the Bush years after Dubya has someone ghost write his memoirs. I'm not sure what is more disturbing, the answers the panel gave or that Matthews felt the need to ask the question in the first place.

Matthews: Welcome back. On Friday George W. Bush said his memoir comes out this November. That will be two years since Barack Obama’s victory which some say was a repudiation of the Bush years and that brings us to this question. Will there be George W. Bush nostalgia this November when his book comes out? Kelly?

O’Donnell: Well every president gets a bit of that and I think the more George Bush is not visible, is not talking now; the more there will be interest in what he had to say.

Matthews: Will there be nostalgia?

O’Donnell: For some there will be.

Matthews: Okay, David Ignatius…

Ignatius: It depends on large part on where things are in Iraq. If after the election next month Iraq looks stable a lot of people are going to say, you know we weren’t comfortable with it at the time but George Bush was right.

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There are so many things wrong with this panel discussion on the Chris Matthews Show, it's hard to decide where to begin, but for starters, Andrea Mitchell seems to be the only one that gets it that some happy talk on increasing our troop presence in Afghanistan is not going to satisfy the left. Chris Matthews seems to take absolute glee in the fact that escalating our presence there is going to piss off those of us who are anti-war and thinks that “the center” of this country is pro-war.

Joe Klein thinks that President Obama’s bigger problems are going to be from the screeching right that are not going to support him no matter what he does and that of course the left is going to have to suck it up if the President does something they don’t agree with. As John has said here repeatedly, the Villagers always think it’s a good thing if Obama alienates his base and that we should all sit quietly and STFU when we don't agree with his policies.

I’ll wait to hear what the President has to say on Tuesday rather than second guess him as the media has, but playing the middle and sending more troops rather than getting our military out of Afghanistan is not going to satisfy any of us who don’t think we belonged there in the first place. The people who attacked us on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, but we didn’t invade and occupy that country.

Matthews: And finally the President said he will say how much it’s going to cost. Anne it’s amazing. I’ve never heard of going to war but saying how much is it going to cost. It’s like that old saying if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Kornblut: Well, the White House would say the opposite, that we haven’t asked until now and they have to finally start taking it into account. They’ve actually broken down the numbers to figure out how many per soldier it would be. You know half a million dollars a year to have them there, so at this point they’re taking it into account and they’re measuring it against the other important priorities, like health care, like the other domestic achievements they want to get done.

Matthews: Andrea isn’t it odd we’re talking about the cost of this war and we’re already in it?

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