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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 if the interview with former CIA torture architect Jose Rodriguez on 60 Minutes wasn't bad enough, Sean Hannity followed up the next day with an even more infuriating interview of Rodriguez as well. If you were disgusted by Leslie Stahl lobbing friendly softballs to this war criminal, it's probably not going to do your blood pressure any good to watch the Hannity job he received the next evening on Fox.

Hannity brought on Pat Buchanan this Wednesday evening and was continuing to parrot Rodriguez's talking points that without torture, President Obama would not have had the intelligence needed to send in the SEAL team after bin Laden.

As Media Matters has been documenting, carrying water for Bush and Cheney's torture program is nothing new for Fox or the right-wing media. You can read more about that from last year here: Right-Wing Media Still Hyping EITs, Ignoring Experts' Dispute, and here: Right-Wing Media Tout Bin Laden Death As Victory For Torture, Ignore Dispute.

And here is their latest report debunking Hannity's talking points in the clip above: One Book Defending Waterboarding Doesn't Change The Fact That Torture Doesn't Work:

In a book published Monday, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service during the Bush administration, defends the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) such as waterboarding, a technique that groups such as Amnesty International have called "torture." Rodriguez claimed that EITs "led to the capture and killing of Usama bin Ladin." However, multiple experts, including a CIA interrogator, an FBI counterintelligence expert, a former CIA inspector general, and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, have said that these techniques were not effective or did not lead to the strike against bin Laden. [...]

One can hear the same argument Rodriguez is making on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, which have touted bin Laden's death as a victory for EITs and President Bush. But it's an argument rebutted by many experts, who dispute whether the use of EITs yielded critical intelligence that led to bin Laden.

And you can read those rebuttals in the rest of their post. I'm still waiting for Hannity to take up that offer Keith Olbermann made for him to be waterboarded back in 2009 if he still doesn't think it's torture. Transcript of Hannity and Buchanan below the fold.

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur takes apart the 60 Minutes interview with former CIA torture architect Jose Rodriguez which we posted on earlier here – Whitewashing Torture, Redux.

I'm quite sure that Rodriguez would never come on the air with someone like Cenk, who unlike Leslie Stahl during her softball interview with this man, who was openly admitting to torture and war crimes on the air, actually articulated the amount of disgust that Rodriguez deserves.

And Cenk's exactly right. This is what happens when you don't prosecute people for their crimes. They end up on television giving interviews trying to sell books instead of landing in a jail cell where they belong. And allowing this to go unpunished means that it will happen again. Sadly, our history in recent decades has proven him right about that already.

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday his decision to try 9/11 suspects military tribunals at Guantanamo.

Holder said that he stood behind his initial decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in criminal court.

"Now, unfortunately, since I made that decision, members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to try in the United States regardless of the venue," he explained.

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Keith Olbermann talked to former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander about George Bush's admission of the use of waterboarding during the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

As Dan Froomkin noted at the HuffPo, Alexander is not the only former military and intelligence official upset with George Bush.

Bush's Glib Waterboarding Admission Sparks Outrage:

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn't appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

[...] Matthew Alexander, the pseudonymous former Air Force interrogator and author of "How To Break A Terrorist" e-mailed HuffPost that Bush's statement "is de facto approval of the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers in Iraq who were killed by foreign fighters that Al Qaida recruited based on the President's policy of torture and abuse of detainees.

"At least now we know where the blame for those soldiers' deaths squarely belongs. President Bush's decision broke with a military tradition dating back to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War and the consequences are clear: Al Qaida is stronger and our country is less safe."

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November 17, 2009 C-SPAN

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November 17, 2009 C-SPAN

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November 16, 2009 C-SPAN

Steve Benen has more:

Last night's speech wasn't nearly as adorable. Shadegg spoke from the House floor to rail against a criminal trial for alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City. In particular, the far-right Arizonan was incensed that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) believes, "It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered."

As Matt Finkelstein reported, Shadegg doesn't see it quite the same way. "I saw the Mayor of New York said today, 'We're tough. We can do it,'" the Republican congressman said. "Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter that's kidnapped at school by a terrorist? How are you going to feel when it's some clerk -- some innocent clerk of the court -- whose daughter or son is kidnapped? Or the jailer's little brother or little sister?"

As a matter of decency, Shadegg's little tantrum was vile and unnecessary. If Shadegg has a policy argument to make, fine. But openly speculating on the House floor about imaginary kidnappings of the mayor's daughter is loathsome, even by the standards of congressional Republicans.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NBC's David Gregory that a trial for the alleged 9/11 mastermind in New York City was "appropriate."

Clinton said New York City residents shouldn't fear the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "All believe that New York City not only can handle this, but that it is appropriate to go forward in the very area where these people launched this horrific attack against us," Clinton said Sunday.

Not everyone is convinced that a trial so near the 9/11 attack is the best decision. Appearing on CNN Sunday, former mayor Rudy Giuliani said that the trial would put residents at risk.

November 13, 2009 News Corp

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