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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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From CNN's State of the Union, John Boehner with his daily dose of fear mongering on closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Heaven forbid we can't try them here because their friends might come and get us.

CROWLEY: One last question, and this is on terrorism. And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and civilian trials versus military tribunals. It appears that there may be a deal in the works which the president would reverse the Holder decision -- Attorney General Holder's decision to try these 9-11 suspects in a civilian court to perhaps a military tribunal in exchange for money to bring some of these prisoners they can't try and put them in a super-max wherever they decide. Is that acceptable to you?

BOEHNER: We'll have to see what the final pieces of this look like. But we have -- we have a world class facility at Guantanamo. And -- and--

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: But they're going to close that. You know that? I mean--

BOEHNER: Well, no they're not. They -- they keep saying they are. But they want $500 million from this Congress to rehabilitate this prison in northwest Illinois. I want to see who the members are who are going to vote for this. I wouldn't vote for this if you put a gun to my head.

CROWLEY: But it's such a -- Guantanamo Bay has such a bad feel to it across the world. And that's one of the reasons given for -- fine -- it's a great facility. But it's one of the reasons that people in the world looked at America and thought they have really strayed from their value system.

So if you were to move -- which has been a very important Republican point on foreign policy. If you were to move these trials into a military tribunal, why not say, "Fine, bring them? Guantanamo Bay has a bad feel to it. Let's put them in a super max and be done with it."

BOEHNER: Well, I think we have a world class facility at Guantanamo. I think it's the appropriate -- appropriate place to hold these prisoners. And they can do the -- the tribunals right there at Guantanamo. There is no reason to bring these terrorists into the United States. No reason to increase the threat level here, because they're here. Their friends may want to come. It makes no sense to me. And I don't think the Congress will appropriate one dime to move those prisoners from Guantanamo to the United States.

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Bill-O with a bit of fear mongering on what the United States should be doing with terrorism suspects, which is trying them in civilian court and not military tribunals. I understand the objections to the trials being held in New York but there’s no reason they could not be moved to another court in the United States. Of course O’Reilly simplifies this to the point of fighting “bad guys” and claims that Gitmo hasn’t been a recruiting tool. His proof… they’d still hate us if we closed it.

Well, yeah since that’s not the only reason we’ve got a terrorism problem. Heaven forbid the likes of O’Reilly might recognize that our foreign policy in general and the extreme poverty of desperate people might just have something to do with people being willing to blow themselves up or kill themselves to make a political point.

The Obama administration is making a huge mistake with this decision and one result that’s already manifesting itself is giving this asshat this talking point when it didn’t have to happen.

O’Reilly: Politically speaking we can look at this two ways. On the positive side President Obama could reverse a bad policy and that is a good thing. On the negative side Holder’s civilian trial vision was so misguided it’s almost frightening. Apparently Holder thinks America is on trial here—that our anti-terrorism strategies need to be justified to the world. That is a dangerous point of view that would get Americans killed in the future.

If the Obama administration is going to back track and make themselves look like flip floppers while making deals with Lindsey Graham, I sure as hell hope they got something in return for it. Given their track record so far on how the health care debate went, I’m not optimistic about the prospect that they did. For now they’re giving Fox their talking points that the Attorney General hates America and that these military tribunals which don’t have good results are a better way to go than civilian trials. Bravo.

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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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MSNBC terrorism analyist Evan Kohlmann responds to Lindsey Graham's fear mongering and talking points that we need to have suspected terrorist tried in military tribunals and why it is ridiculous that we cannot have the trials in New York. Sadly the administration looks like they're waivering on this one.

Witt: You are perfectly comfortable with it being held in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, absolutely comfortable that we would have the security with which to keep New Yorkers…

Kohlmann: We’ve got trials going on right now here in New York involving hard core, well trained, highly trained senior terrorists. I mean just a few days ago the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s cousin, or nephew was just convicted, here in New York—right here in the southern district. No one said anything. There were no riots. There were no terrorist attacks. The world didn’t come to an end.

Witt: Well perhaps the focus wasn’t… I mean the media scrutiny wasn’t as great.

Kohlmann: Right. But that’s the point is that this was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew. This woman was captured outside of a U.S. base in Afghanistan with information about terrorist attacks here in the United States. You couldn’t imagine someone to be more hard core than that. She was convicted resoundingly. She tried turning the trial into a circus. The judge immediately told her “You’re outta’ here”. He kicked her out of court. He only let her in when she agreed to calm down. The answer is that we’re already doing this. We’ve been doing it for years. There is absolutely no reason we can’t do it again.

Kohlmann goes on to point out that this is of course, all about politics. Alex Witt later in the broadcast brought in her “boys” Grandpa Pat Buchanan and some guy who they call a “Democratic strategist” who’s always on with Buchanan on the weekends, who actually said that terrorists shouldn’t get lawyers no matter what our Constitution says. Witt, of course, during that interview seemed to completely forget she even had this conversation with Kohlmann.