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Bill O'Really just devoted a segment of his "No Spin Zone" to the newest release of Abu Ghraib torture pictures.

He of course claimed to take the "high road" by not showing the pictures, as if not showing them would actually make terrorists forget (your laugh here) that the torture and humiliation had taken (still is taking?) place despite the fact that O'Reilly is doing an entire segment on it.

In another attempt to proverbially cover his ass, he foreworded the asinine rant with two sentences which, if I may paraphrase, said, "I do not condone the torture or abuse of these prisoners. It is wrong and anyone who is doing it should be sent to jail, just as eight soldiers have already been prosecuted for it have."

That said, he proceeded to lambaste the media for reporting the news, as this news allegedly endangers U.S. troops in combat zones by inciting insurgents and terrorists.

While O'Reilly may have a point about this news endangering troops, I will not critique his two-facedness about "endangering troops" in this thread. Rather, the question so obvious that even O'Reilly felt inclined to include a preemptive disclaimer for it is: Why isn't he criticizing the soldiers for torturing and abusing the prisoners in the first place? If the prisoners hadn't performed these senseless and illegal acts knowing full well that word of their practices could very well anger dissenters to the point of retaliatory violence, then the media would not have anything of the sort to report.

Instead, O'Reilly expects that his little holier-than-thou introduction hides the fact that he apparently has less of a problem with illegal, inhumane abuse and torture than he does with accurate reporting. (But then, nobody but far-right wingnuts consider O'Lielly an accurate reporter.) Moreover, as exposed on yesterday's show where he was arguing that Cheney's hunting incident was merely trivial news, O'Reilly can't even find guest panelists to agree with him on which stories are more newsworthy than others.

From just the past two days, it would be very easy to conclude that O'Reilly is all for censorship of accurate reporting and could hardly care less about violations of domestic and international law. (Sounds rather Republicanesque, doesn't it?)

Strangely, I don't think we're going to see Bill offering to take himself off the air in the name of censorship anytime soon. And that's just a shame.

Remember in Animal Farm - "some animals are more equal than others"? - O'Reilly (shaming his Irish heritage) is just another pig in this remake.

DOUG
Torture does not produce reliable intelligence. Experts know this. But Republicans want to continue torture because it satisfies their sadistic impulses.

John McCain wrote:

Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear -- whether it is true or false -- if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered.

Newsweek, November 21

O'Lielly should marry Ann Coulter and have children. Then they could all torture each other.

BTW, every damn time I try to post a comment under my user name this thing tells me "Sorry, but this username has already been taken." I KNOW that. I took it. Just can't seem to use it....

Doug wrote:Torture does not produce reliable intelligence. Experts know this. But Republicans want to continue torture because it satisfies their sadistic impulses.

It's my understanding that this round was more humiliation and abuse than torture, although your point about Republicans' sadistic impulses still applies...

(Baber) wrote:BTW, every damn time I try to post a comment under my user name this thing tells me "Sorry, but this username has already been taken." I KNOW that. I took it. Just can't seem to use it....

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If you can't figure it out, post in the Help forum or email me.

I don't even know where to start on this torture that our government seems determined to carry out. I spent several years in the Marines and we use to have training on how to handle POWs a couple of times a year and on page 1, chapter 1, paragraph 1 "The U.S. armed forces do not torture POWs!" I guess since I seperated from the service for the last time in 2000 they must have changed all of that. That is right before the present administration took over. So if I know what we are allowed and not allowed to do to POWs, why does this administration seem so determine to carry this torture out and then cover it up?

All of this crap that this administration is carring out lends some weight to my argument that we should have 1 or 2 years of national service. If the people in Washington that are allowing these atrocities to take place thought even for a minute that their own sons and daughters could be put in this situation of being tortured it would not be happening! Of course the national service system would have to be fair without any loop holes where the off-spring of a senator would not get special treatment.

How many generations will have to pass before we are able to stand on the world stage without a black eye?

James

P.S. Doug I am reading your book for the second time.
Darrel my wife has taken you book and I have only read part of it but I was enjoying what I read.

JamesH wrote:I spent several years in the Marines and we use to have training on how to handle POWs a couple of times a year and on page 1, chapter 1, paragraph 1 "The U.S. armed forces do not torture POWs!"

Well, I had a small handful of jokes written up for everyone to have a "pick your own joke" night, but the only good ones seem to boil down to this:

That wasn't the training manual, that was just the press release.

Perhaps I'll leave the yucks to Pops in the future, James.