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Today show has special guest Rachel Maddow in to replace Coulter.
MADDOW: …… and with torture and warrantless wiretapping and rendition and these other things, those things are going to continue to resonate in your career for the rest of your life.
VIEIRA: Let’s talk about expectations, because right after he was elected,
Maddow makes the above inflammatory drive by statement and Vieira just moves onto the next topic. Journalistic malpractice at work.
How about a journalistic question like.
The President has said and many others in the intelligence community feel it was necessary in 2 or 3 instances to use water boarding, which they don’t consider torture, to get information that saved American lives. Was the president wrong in doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack that may have saved hundreds or even thousands of lives?
Whatever the answer or your position is on the subject (that is irrelevant) the journalist job is to challenge statements like Maddows. NBC is incapable of challenging the liberal narrative because they are practicing what I can only describe as journalistic incest. Yet they challenge everything that comes out of Ann Coulters mouth.
The President has said and many others in the intelligence community feel it was necessary in 2 or 3 instances to use water boarding, which they don’t consider torture, to get information that saved American lives. Was the president wrong in doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack that may have saved hundreds or even thousands of lives?
Two or three instances? And everyone else in the world considers suffocating-almost-to-the-point-of-death torture, so I’m not sure why the opinion of one guy who has a pretty warped ethical standard should be the end-all to the question.
Whatever you think ETHICALLY about torture, you should at least recognize INTELLECTUALLY that it simply doesn’t work. People can be made to say anything you want them to say, so even if you get ‘actionable intelligence’ from a torture victim, you have no idea whether or not it’s true. So should we base military decisions (what targets to bomb, for instance) based on information forced from someone under duress? You’ve got even odds of targeting harmless civilians.
Of course, if you don’t care about what happens to a bunch of brown people on the other side of the world, as is pretty obviously the case with the Bush Regime, I guess it really doesn’t matter.
Boy, I’d love to get you in a torture room. Say I didn’t know your birthday and SS#. I bet I can get it out of you before you lose all your fingers and eyeballs lol.
I say torture works. I don’t condone it, but as a rational thinking human being, I know that if someone was sticking a needle in my eye and wanted information from me, I might be forced to give them that info.
It’s called common sense.
You oppose torture on moral grounds, understandably. But you’re using your moral opposition to try to rationalize its effectiveness.
Your rational is weak. Is torture %100 guaranteed to work? Of course not.
But can you get info you want out of someone by torturing them? Absolutely.
Well, I certainly got the debate going. My larger point was there is no debate at NBC news. They all think like (with all due respect) Art and NBC has no interest in representing any other point of view. That’s not news, its pure propaganda.
Is torture %100 guaranteed to work? Of course not.
That’s kind of my point. What’s the point of violating the laws of common humanity to extract information that’s no more reliable than a guess? You STILL have to use other sources of information to verify it. So you might as well do good police work to begin with.
That’s why we don’t use torture, Art. We’ve used waterboarding 3 times, and it’s debatable whether that’s torture or not.
You have not one shred of proof the Bush administration used or condoned torture at Gitmo. Of course, you’ll never let those facts get in the way of a good story. Ditto for NBC.
^
Talk about a lemming. The Bush administration said it, therefore it MUST be true, right? Because they would NEVER, EVER lie to protect their own a**es, right? My goodness, and I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in. REAL cheap.
I’m not sure I agree with L&J’s assessment of the Maddow interview. Rachel clearly presents herself as a liberal, just as Ann Coulter is a conservative. If Maddow was presented up front as voicing her opinion, as Coulter would have been, Veira would have no reason to confront her statements. She asked for an opinion and got it. I haven’t seen the interview so you’ll have to let me know how it was set up.
Water-boarding sure looks like torture to me. The main reason for not torturing is to uphold international agreements that hopefully prevent our soldiers from facing the same fate.
Torture won’t work 100% of the time cause there are just nuts out there that want their 72 virgins. I have no sympathy for terrorists and I am confident that I can get at least 50% of the terrorist to talk, probably higher but if it works on 1 terrorist it’s good enough for me.
BDS liberals are probably the easiest to crack. They will sell out America before even losing an eyelash let alone, fingers, eyeballs, skin, tongue or their boom boom maker lol.
Big talk from uncle and shawny. They will CRACK in my torture pit!
Uh, lurker, you should actually read your posts before posting. This post has shown everyone here everything they need to know about you. Again, I ask lurker, how old are you? I see a pimply-faced, overweight, loner who is all of 15 or 16. If that is not your actual age, that is where your maturity level is.
And just to clarify, are you saying that, if you were being suject to torture, that you would not crack and tell whomever what they wanted to hear, right? That is what you’re saying right? You’re a tough guy, right? The evil brown terrurrrrrrists could never get you to talk, right? Is that what you’re saying?
I am just in awe of how juvenile and idiotic your rantings are. Unbelievable.
These people act like this whole thing is a game. All of them want to be Jack Bauer. They cannot comprehend that television is FICTION. He doesn’t actually exist. I mean, if these are the types of people that make up the Republican Party (and I have no reason to think otherwise), this country is in a heap of trouble. I realize they have been marginalized by the last two election, but there are still 30-35% of the country that still identify as Republican. That is scary.
“Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, reported that a tough interrogation technique called “waterboarding” had been used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break Mohammed, inducing him to surrender “very valuable” information. ”
SMH3477 of the world still lives in pre-911! The terrorist won’t debate about how cruel and inhumane cutting your head off and posted it on the Internet…
SMH3477 aand Unclearthur also needs to pick up “Imperial Hubris: : Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer”, a former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit. He will tell you that waterboarding worked…
“Did you guys check the experts? Or are you relying on your ‘common sense’? Because people in the ‘interrogation’ field KNOW it doesn’t work.”
Well, I guess the “unnamed “liberal experts are just wrong again. Who’d a thought! Do you think the CIA qualifies as experts? No I suppose they don’t have a clue and just do it for kicks.
I’m not for torture but we know for a fact it works. Senate committee testimony from the CIA documents the fact that it worked.
Torture is immoral and wrong but there are times that it may be a rational alternative to seeing thousands of innocent people loose their life in a real world 911 repeat. I have a daughter in NY City and I am happy the President is doing everything possible to protect her! To save her life I would probably torture her attacker.
Joes correct, we don’t want our guys tortured either. But I guess Al – Qaeda not get his memo or sign the accords. Remember Danny Pearl? I’m sure he was against torture too.
Joe, please answer this hypothetically honestly. What would you advise Obama to do?
If torturing a terrorist could save your wife and kids from being killed in a certain terrorist attack would you allow it?
Please answer that question and please don’t punt!
Mind you, I think torture is immoral I certainly do not condone torture where the other side is not conducting terrorism against innocent civilians. Please answer the above question?
Joe, the terrorists do not subscribe to the Geneva accords, and have no qualms about killing innocent civilians and torturing them or soldiers.
We don’t act like Al Qaeda.
Waterboarding KSM or couple other high profile Al Qaeda members is a far cry from beheading innocent civilians or purposefully blowing them up in massive explosions.
smh, I know who Jack Bauer is, but in your nonsensical ramblings, you accused us of believing everything we see on “24″ and wanting to be Jack Bauer.
I’ve never once sat down to watch “24″, but I hear it’s a good show. I live in the real world, where there is a legitimate terrorist threat and there are hundreds of thousands of Islamic radicals who do want to destroy the Western way of life.
You live in Fantasyland where the only evils in this world are perpetrated by the Bush administration.
L&J, your hypothetical is hard to answer because I don’t think the scenario is realistic. If one terrorist attack was certain to happen and certain to be thwarted by one instance of torture, I would support that instance of breaking international law. I don’t consider the scenario plausible. The chances of being certain of an attack, and being certain one guy has the info to make or break it, are very small.
What do I want Obama to do? I want him to restore America’s reputation by banning torture and indefinate incarceration without trial. And if he secretly really does need to torture one guy one time to prevent an attack, fine with me. Just don’t do what Bush and Cheney did, which was create a culture of whatever-we-wanna-do-is-fine-’cause-we-say-so that lead to the abuses of Abu Ghraeb [spelling?], which lead to a lot more pissed off Muslims.
If my answer sounds hypocritical, it’s because I’m not a liberal idealist. I am a left leaning centrist who’s looking toward Obama to set a better standard than Bush did, but knows that in the face of Islamist extremism, the rules do have to bend sometimes.
That is great advice for Obama Joe. We are on the same page except for the partisanship. I hope and pray that Obama is successful and he never has to make such a decision. Thanks for your honesty courage in answering such a difficult question.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO BACK TO THE REGULAR COLOR SCHEME OF THE OLD SITE (http://insidecable.blogsome.com/) -WHITE BACKGROUND WITH BLACK FONT. THIS NEW BLACK BACKGROUND HURTS MY EYES LIKE CRAZY!!! CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS!!
Elmo, bring something to the party. All these news topics are talked about and debated on FNC but I guess you never watch or listen to anything outside the echo chamber of MSNBC.
I now know how a star like Ann Coulter may feel. LOL Thanks for the little rush.
January 6, 2009 at 11:20 am
Today show has special guest Rachel Maddow in to replace Coulter.
MADDOW: …… and with torture and warrantless wiretapping and rendition and these other things, those things are going to continue to resonate in your career for the rest of your life.
VIEIRA: Let’s talk about expectations, because right after he was elected,
Maddow makes the above inflammatory drive by statement and Vieira just moves onto the next topic. Journalistic malpractice at work.
How about a journalistic question like.
The President has said and many others in the intelligence community feel it was necessary in 2 or 3 instances to use water boarding, which they don’t consider torture, to get information that saved American lives. Was the president wrong in doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack that may have saved hundreds or even thousands of lives?
Whatever the answer or your position is on the subject (that is irrelevant) the journalist job is to challenge statements like Maddows. NBC is incapable of challenging the liberal narrative because they are practicing what I can only describe as journalistic incest. Yet they challenge everything that comes out of Ann Coulters mouth.
January 6, 2009 at 11:47 am
Ann Coulter is nothing more than a Bill O’Reilly with a skirt, aal they do is say stupid things and writes stupid books.
January 6, 2009 at 11:58 am
Everything that’s not liberal think is stupid…..brilliant!
January 6, 2009 at 12:09 pm
The President has said and many others in the intelligence community feel it was necessary in 2 or 3 instances to use water boarding, which they don’t consider torture, to get information that saved American lives. Was the president wrong in doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack that may have saved hundreds or even thousands of lives?
Two or three instances? And everyone else in the world considers suffocating-almost-to-the-point-of-death torture, so I’m not sure why the opinion of one guy who has a pretty warped ethical standard should be the end-all to the question.
Whatever you think ETHICALLY about torture, you should at least recognize INTELLECTUALLY that it simply doesn’t work. People can be made to say anything you want them to say, so even if you get ‘actionable intelligence’ from a torture victim, you have no idea whether or not it’s true. So should we base military decisions (what targets to bomb, for instance) based on information forced from someone under duress? You’ve got even odds of targeting harmless civilians.
Of course, if you don’t care about what happens to a bunch of brown people on the other side of the world, as is pretty obviously the case with the Bush Regime, I guess it really doesn’t matter.
January 6, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Arthur, these people cannot be reasoned with. They think that the world is like ‘24′. They all like to be tough guys.
January 6, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Art, I’m confident that we could find out all sorts of interesting things about you with a few moments of waterboarding.
January 6, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Boy, I’d love to get you in a torture room. Say I didn’t know your birthday and SS#. I bet I can get it out of you before you lose all your fingers and eyeballs lol.
January 6, 2009 at 12:31 pm
^
See what I’m saying. It’s all a fantasy world to these people.
January 6, 2009 at 12:40 pm
According to the Washington Post, Obama has offered Sanjay Gupta the Surgeon General position.
January 6, 2009 at 12:44 pm
^
Yup, fantasy! lol… So how many fingers, eyeballs and other goodies are you willing to lose to say torture doesn’t work?
January 6, 2009 at 1:02 pm
You guys are sad pathetic clowns. Google ‘effectiveness of torture’ and stop posturing like middleschoolers.
January 6, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Come on lurkerlou. You’re clearly not an “intellectual” like smh & art. All “intellectuals” (aka liberal lemmings) know torture doesn’t work.
Of course, there’s one very easy way to prove them wrong.
All morons (conservatives) believe waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to find out if another terrorist attack is imminent is probably a good idea.
January 6, 2009 at 1:04 pm
^^ more puerile chest-pounding.
January 6, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Not chest-pounding. It’s called debating.
I say torture works. I don’t condone it, but as a rational thinking human being, I know that if someone was sticking a needle in my eye and wanted information from me, I might be forced to give them that info.
It’s called common sense.
You oppose torture on moral grounds, understandably. But you’re using your moral opposition to try to rationalize its effectiveness.
Your rational is weak. Is torture %100 guaranteed to work? Of course not.
But can you get info you want out of someone by torturing them? Absolutely.
January 6, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Well, I certainly got the debate going. My larger point was there is no debate at NBC news. They all think like (with all due respect) Art and NBC has no interest in representing any other point of view. That’s not news, its pure propaganda.
January 6, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Did you guys check the experts? or are you relying on your ‘common sense’? Because people in the ‘interrogation’ field KNOW it doesn’t work.
January 6, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Is torture %100 guaranteed to work? Of course not.
That’s kind of my point. What’s the point of violating the laws of common humanity to extract information that’s no more reliable than a guess? You STILL have to use other sources of information to verify it. So you might as well do good police work to begin with.
January 6, 2009 at 1:54 pm
That’s why we don’t use torture, Art. We’ve used waterboarding 3 times, and it’s debatable whether that’s torture or not.
You have not one shred of proof the Bush administration used or condoned torture at Gitmo. Of course, you’ll never let those facts get in the way of a good story. Ditto for NBC.
January 6, 2009 at 1:59 pm
^
Talk about a lemming. The Bush administration said it, therefore it MUST be true, right? Because they would NEVER, EVER lie to protect their own a**es, right? My goodness, and I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in. REAL cheap.
January 6, 2009 at 2:30 pm
No smh, because the Bush administration said it, it MUST be false.
January 6, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I’m not sure I agree with L&J’s assessment of the Maddow interview. Rachel clearly presents herself as a liberal, just as Ann Coulter is a conservative. If Maddow was presented up front as voicing her opinion, as Coulter would have been, Veira would have no reason to confront her statements. She asked for an opinion and got it. I haven’t seen the interview so you’ll have to let me know how it was set up.
Water-boarding sure looks like torture to me. The main reason for not torturing is to uphold international agreements that hopefully prevent our soldiers from facing the same fate.
January 6, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Torture won’t work 100% of the time cause there are just nuts out there that want their 72 virgins. I have no sympathy for terrorists and I am confident that I can get at least 50% of the terrorist to talk, probably higher but if it works on 1 terrorist it’s good enough for me.
BDS liberals are probably the easiest to crack. They will sell out America before even losing an eyelash let alone, fingers, eyeballs, skin, tongue or their boom boom maker lol.
Big talk from uncle and shawny. They will CRACK in my torture pit!
January 6, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Uh, lurker, you should actually read your posts before posting. This post has shown everyone here everything they need to know about you. Again, I ask lurker, how old are you? I see a pimply-faced, overweight, loner who is all of 15 or 16. If that is not your actual age, that is where your maturity level is.
And just to clarify, are you saying that, if you were being suject to torture, that you would not crack and tell whomever what they wanted to hear, right? That is what you’re saying right? You’re a tough guy, right? The evil brown terrurrrrrrists could never get you to talk, right? Is that what you’re saying?
I am just in awe of how juvenile and idiotic your rantings are. Unbelievable.
January 6, 2009 at 2:44 pm
These people act like this whole thing is a game. All of them want to be Jack Bauer. They cannot comprehend that television is FICTION. He doesn’t actually exist. I mean, if these are the types of people that make up the Republican Party (and I have no reason to think otherwise), this country is in a heap of trouble. I realize they have been marginalized by the last two election, but there are still 30-35% of the country that still identify as Republican. That is scary.
January 6, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Who’s Jack Bauer?
January 6, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I’m not sure. Who is Jack Bauer?
Ferchrissake.
January 6, 2009 at 3:06 pm
To smh3477 and unclearthur:
“Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, reported that a tough interrogation technique called “waterboarding” had been used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break Mohammed, inducing him to surrender “very valuable” information. ”
http://thehill.com/byron-york/when-waterboarding-works-2007-12-13.html
SMH3477 of the world still lives in pre-911! The terrorist won’t debate about how cruel and inhumane cutting your head off and posted it on the Internet…
January 6, 2009 at 3:13 pm
SMH3477 aand Unclearthur also needs to pick up “Imperial Hubris: : Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer”, a former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit. He will tell you that waterboarding worked…
January 6, 2009 at 3:26 pm
…and I’m sure water-boarding will work on our soldiers, too. It’s torture, it’s against the Geneva Convention, and this isn’t the Soviet Union.
January 6, 2009 at 4:47 pm
“Did you guys check the experts? Or are you relying on your ‘common sense’? Because people in the ‘interrogation’ field KNOW it doesn’t work.”
Well, I guess the “unnamed “liberal experts are just wrong again. Who’d a thought! Do you think the CIA qualifies as experts? No I suppose they don’t have a clue and just do it for kicks.
I’m not for torture but we know for a fact it works. Senate committee testimony from the CIA documents the fact that it worked.
Torture is immoral and wrong but there are times that it may be a rational alternative to seeing thousands of innocent people loose their life in a real world 911 repeat. I have a daughter in NY City and I am happy the President is doing everything possible to protect her! To save her life I would probably torture her attacker.
Joes correct, we don’t want our guys tortured either. But I guess Al – Qaeda not get his memo or sign the accords. Remember Danny Pearl? I’m sure he was against torture too.
January 6, 2009 at 4:51 pm
So we’re supposed to act like Al Qaeda? That’s ridiculous. You don’t have to break the Geneva accords to capture, interrogate or kill a terrorist.
January 6, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Joe, please answer this hypothetically honestly. What would you advise Obama to do?
If torturing a terrorist could save your wife and kids from being killed in a certain terrorist attack would you allow it?
Please answer that question and please don’t punt!
Mind you, I think torture is immoral I certainly do not condone torture where the other side is not conducting terrorism against innocent civilians. Please answer the above question?
January 6, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Joe, the terrorists do not subscribe to the Geneva accords, and have no qualms about killing innocent civilians and torturing them or soldiers.
We don’t act like Al Qaeda.
Waterboarding KSM or couple other high profile Al Qaeda members is a far cry from beheading innocent civilians or purposefully blowing them up in massive explosions.
smh, I know who Jack Bauer is, but in your nonsensical ramblings, you accused us of believing everything we see on “24″ and wanting to be Jack Bauer.
I’ve never once sat down to watch “24″, but I hear it’s a good show. I live in the real world, where there is a legitimate terrorist threat and there are hundreds of thousands of Islamic radicals who do want to destroy the Western way of life.
You live in Fantasyland where the only evils in this world are perpetrated by the Bush administration.
January 6, 2009 at 5:53 pm
L&J, your hypothetical is hard to answer because I don’t think the scenario is realistic. If one terrorist attack was certain to happen and certain to be thwarted by one instance of torture, I would support that instance of breaking international law. I don’t consider the scenario plausible. The chances of being certain of an attack, and being certain one guy has the info to make or break it, are very small.
What do I want Obama to do? I want him to restore America’s reputation by banning torture and indefinate incarceration without trial. And if he secretly really does need to torture one guy one time to prevent an attack, fine with me. Just don’t do what Bush and Cheney did, which was create a culture of whatever-we-wanna-do-is-fine-’cause-we-say-so that lead to the abuses of Abu Ghraeb [spelling?], which lead to a lot more pissed off Muslims.
If my answer sounds hypocritical, it’s because I’m not a liberal idealist. I am a left leaning centrist who’s looking toward Obama to set a better standard than Bush did, but knows that in the face of Islamist extremism, the rules do have to bend sometimes.
January 6, 2009 at 6:12 pm
That is great advice for Obama Joe. We are on the same page except for the partisanship. I hope and pray that Obama is successful and he never has to make such a decision. Thanks for your honesty courage in answering such a difficult question.
January 6, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Oh lovely. Now we get Coulter on O’Reilly tomorrow to explain her “mainstream media controversy”. That girl is a PR genius.
January 6, 2009 at 8:25 pm
So nice to have ya’ll talking about cable news like this…
January 6, 2009 at 8:26 pm
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO BACK TO THE REGULAR COLOR SCHEME OF THE OLD SITE (http://insidecable.blogsome.com/) -WHITE BACKGROUND WITH BLACK FONT. THIS NEW BLACK BACKGROUND HURTS MY EYES LIKE CRAZY!!! CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS!!
January 6, 2009 at 8:32 pm
ICN is like a Mars/Almond Joy commercial…sometimes you feel like a black background…sometimes you don’t…
January 6, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Ha. I got my cable news reference to O’Reilly in just before you chimed in Spud.
January 6, 2009 at 11:15 pm
You need to the ban Liberty and Justice to get this blog back on Cable News.
January 7, 2009 at 4:49 am
Elmo, bring something to the party. All these news topics are talked about and debated on FNC but I guess you never watch or listen to anything outside the echo chamber of MSNBC.
I now know how a star like Ann Coulter may feel. LOL Thanks for the little rush.
January 7, 2009 at 10:12 am
Elmo: I think a better solution is to stop the daily “Free For All.”
January 7, 2009 at 11:58 am
You may be right TTC. I’m a little confused about the purpose of Free For All anyway.