The Five hosts joined the Fox News torture cheerleading yesterday. They dismissed out of hand the particulars of the report, which found that torture was both more brutal than had previously been disclosed and did not stop a single terrorist attack. Instead, co-hosts Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle seemed to be competing for ways to minimize torture as harmless, an innocuous process that keeps the country safe.
As usual, Bob Beckel put up a relatively toothless advocacy for liberal values. He never, for example, gave the kind of full-throated denunciation of torture that his own conservative colleague, Kennedy, offered up yesterday. Or that given by Republican Senator John McCain. It's pretty pathetic when a Democrat is outdone by conservatives in advocating for liberal causes. But that's Fox News for you. And Fox News Democrats.
Meanwhile, co-host Eric Bolling announced, “For the record, I still think it’s OK to do something like this as long as it’s done in a fair way. I think the torture – I’m sorry, the enhanced interrogation techniques, I think they served their purpose. I think they made us safer.
Bolling described waterboarding as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “getting water splashed on his face.” Bolling made light of the other procedures as “getting slapped or hearing loud music or kept awake a hundred hours.”
Putin-loving, George Zimmerman-apologist Kimberly Guilfoyle interrupted. She said scornfully, “Loud music and awake for three days? It’s called law school, preparing for the bar exam.” Guilfoyle also called our allies who assisted with our torture "so courageous."
Later, Beckel began to argue that the U.S. "lives by rules and morality" that exceeds the rest of the world. "For us to step over that line and to do these things," he began. But he never got to finish. Bolling and Guilfoyle rudely interrupted.
"What line, Bob?" Bolling said, sounding exasperated."That line wasn't overstepped. It was legal."
Again, Guilfoyle interrupted. She didn't try to hide the condescension in her voice. "There was no illegal activity. Everything they did was sanctioned and put together in reports. There was no prosecution from this. Do you understand that?" She yammered on with more outrage that concluded with, "Why didn't you object then and why are you doing it now?"
Beckel never got a chance to finish his thought.
The next time you hear any of these conservatives hold themselves up as any kinds of beacons for morality, throw this right back in their faces.
Watch it below, from yesterday's The Five. (H/T Kevin K.)
BTW I also believe that Beckel does not understand that his position on drones vs torture simply doesn’t hold water. He can’t just say that it’s wrong to torture people but okay to bomb them, including killing many innocents caught in the blasts. The consistent left position has been that BOTH of these approaches have been morally repugnant. It is not morally defensible to torture people, and it is not morally defensible to kill them – particularly in a scenario where there is no trial, no due process and no opportunity for the accused to testify or appeal. As Aaron Sorkin has eloquently said about that kind of thing, the right wing gets to hit Beckel with that every time they want.
These people operate on the principle of “do as I/we say not as I/we do”.
I’ll volonteer to help torture them should they ever adopt the Golden Rule (“do onto others as you would want others to do onto you”)
… But that’s only because I’m convinced I’d not have to do anything to them, i.e. that they’d start babbling furiously away before anything could be done to them. Handcuff them to a table and force them to view a couple of videos of the sort we’ve been seeing since the start of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration.
I’m very very very glad the report was released. The courage to admit that all of that was wrong, wrong, wrong will help repair America’s reputation as a force for human rights. Those rights were trampled into the mud by the GWB administration: a terrible blot on the history of the planet.
“It’s like listening to the Nazis defend Hitler back in 1939. I say, let Guilfoyle talk. And talk. And talk and talk and talk……”
Like I’ve said NUMEROUS TIMES before:
IF IT WALKS LIKE A NAZI, TALKS LIKE A NAZI, AND ACTS LIKE A NAZI……
’Nuff said.
But- abortion is not illegal, but they do have moral issues with it, so it must be stopped at all costs.
hypocrites
I don’t think Murdoch and Ailes have enough money for these pathetic cretins to keep spewing the Murdoch/Ailes/GOPTeabagger party line after they’ve experienced a mere 15 minutes of the kind of torture they giggle about.
