When it comes to cable news morning shows, each of the three major networks have their own style and blend. CNN for the most part is the responsible station that while they still make mistakes, are pretty fair and balanced, albeit boring. Fox News is the class clowns of the News world and I honestly think that deep down inside even they don’t take themselves seriously. MSNBC, while it has great evening programs, probably have the worse morning show. Yes, its worse than Fox. I can view Fox & Friends as entertainment and not to be taken seriously. Morning Joe on MSNBC however is hosted by two idiots that think they have original thoughts when in actuality they are just a couple of idiots. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are painful to watch in the morning. But this morning it was particularly painful because the spawn of evil Sith Lord Darth Cheney (Liz Cheney) was on to defend her daddy’s decision to speak out against the current Administration’s stance on torture.
I knew it was going to be bad when Joe Scarborough, who wasn’t in studio, called in just to help defend the red herring arguments that Liz Cheney was using. It’s like Scarborough has dog ears and republican bullshit is the whistle that only he can hear. Here’s the illogical arguments that Liz Cheney and Joe Scarborough, along with Dick Cheney and a host of other republican morons, are using to defend torture:
1. It’s not torture
This was the first argument used back when this topic came up when George Bush was still in office. It’s not torture, its “harsh interrogation techniques.” This has to be the most juvenile argument I’ve ever heard. Its like when you were in the car with your sibling and you put your finger as close to their face as possible and when they said “stop touching me” you’d respond “I’m not touching you.” Sure, compared to some ancient Medieval torture methods like the rack or removing someone’s internal organs one by one when they are still alive, waterboarding seems pretty tame. But its still torture. This is like when Whitney Houston was like “I’m too rich to do crack…I do cocaine…I’m not hooked on drugs.” WTF? This redefinition is nothing new for these fools, I’m just mad that news hosts like Mika and Joe let them get away with it. Remember, these same people trying to redefine torture also later said “Well, even IF it was torture…the treatment of these terrorist prisoners isn’t covered under the Geneva Convention because they aren’t Prisoners of War but “enemy combatants”. Are you kidding me? That is absurd.
2. It worked
The most recent claim now being spearheaded by Dick Cheney and his daughter (who Joe Scarborough is obviously infatuated with ) is that these methods worked and therefore we should continue them. Since when did this become the issue? Of course torture produces results. You water board someone 183 times in a few months and they’re going to talk. That’s not the issue. The issue is, is torturing someone the morally right thing to do AND does publicly supporting it benefit us in the long run. Think about it. When there’s a serial rapist, the police aren’t allowed to take him into the interrogation room and waterboard him until he confesses. Our laws don’t allow that. It would be a lot easier for President Obama to get his policies through if he murdered his political opponents. Again, I don’t see anyone asking Robert Gibbs when the President plans on getting rid of his Eric Cantor problem. These things are things that happen in other countries though. I did a story last week about a pregnant British woman that might face the firing squad in Laos, which hosts a really inhumane prison. The British and some American groups are outraged. Yet we allow Dick Cheney and hosts like Joe Scarborough to come on TV and say that because torture works, we should keep doing it.
Here’s the problem, in the short term torture gets your results. But in the long run, the collateral damage you do far outweighs any benefit. When your policy on handling prisoners goes around the Geneva Conventions and the policy is to torture, then you’ve made it difficult to make any kind of political solution to the terrorism problem. Let’s not mince words here. Waterboarding is torture. Forcing someone to go through simulated drowning isn’t a harsh interrogation technique, it’s torture. Plain and simple. If ass clowns like Dick or Liz Cheney think that because it works we should do it, then I don’t see why they have such a problem calling it what it is.
And I’ll leave with this note. If torture is such an effective technique, how come in places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries that support torturing detainees, how come they still produce terrorists. How come terrorists still plan attacks from these countries? If torture is such an effective policy, wouldn’t there be zero crime in those countries? Of course its foolish to come up with such conclusions…but its no more foolish and idiotic than the ones the former Vice President and his daughter are using.
