Senator John McCain visited The O’Reilly Factor tonight where he vehemently explained his opposition to torture. So how did FoxNews.com describe such dissent from the party line? By suggesting otherwise.
McCain told Bill O’Reilly that waterboarding “began with the Spanish Inquisition.” After World War II, McCain said, “We sentenced Japanese to death who had waterboarded our American prisoners. Have no doubt about the exquisite torture that is.”
McCain went on to call torture “really wrong.” But besides that, McCain said, it’s ineffective because if someone is suffering enough, they’ll say anything to make it stop.
Practicing Catholic, pro-life O’Reilly seemed not to care about the morality of torture, only about whether it works. He said he’s “not disputing those facts” that McCain relayed. But then he did just that.
O’Reilly quoted former Bush administration official John Yoo, a prior O’Reilly Factor guest. O’Reilly noted that Yoo had said, “We got worthy intelligence using these harsh methods.” But, O’Reilly also said, “We hear from sitting senators, no we didn’t.”
“It’s impossible for the American people to know!” O’Reilly complained. As if that matters.
O’Reilly also described waterboarding someone as “put him in the water.”
McCain seemed rather exasperated that anyone would even try to argue on behalf of waterboarding or torture. He jokingly said at the end that O’Reilly had pulled out his fingernails.
You probably get the gist. But you might not from just perusing FoxNews.com’s title and description of the segment. Fox called its video, “Supporting the controversial torture report.” The video’s description is, “Senator John Mccain sees merit in the Senate Intelligence Committee CIA report.”
In actuality, McCain never said anything about the merit of the torture report. He was talking torture, itself. But assuming McCain does support the report, you have to read the title very carefully to understand that “supporting the controversial torture report” does not mean “supporting torture,” as a first glance might suggest.
Apparently, Fox just can’t bring itself to simply say that McCain opposes Bush administration torture.
Watch it below. For some late Thursday night enjoyment, I’m also posting Jon Stewart’s wonderful salute to McCain from last night, too.
“Now if these bias jerks at fox ever experienced poverty, racism and cruelty they would support the civilrights act.”
Dear Marco: In my opinion, it’s EXTREMELY LIKELY these biased jerks you speak of have NEVER, EVER experienced poverty, racism and cruelty in their lives. Always remember these IMMORTAL WORDS of Paul Dooley from the classic 1984 romantic comedy “Sixteen Candles” (in case you don’t know, he played the role of “Jim Baker”, father of “Samantha Baker”, which was played by Molly Ringwald):
“WHEN YOU’RE GIVEN THINGS EASILY IN LIFE, IT’S HARD TO APPRECIATE THEM”
’Nuff said.
[cue the chirping crickets]
