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Dec. 13, 2014 - Jimmy Dore Show
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Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Hey, the torture report was released this week, and it revealed that it took a born-again Christian who worships a guy nailed and hung to a cross to teach us that torture is really moral.
I bet you guys didn't know it was especially moral because Pontius Pilot had a memo from John Yoo saying crucifixion was legal.
The list of torture techniques is extensive, but let me highlight my favorites.
Non-stop 24-hour waterboarding, standing on broken legs, forced rectal rehydration, which I'm against outside the bedroom.
Anal anal raping to the point of rectal prolapse, hanging from ceilings, wearing diapers, using a bucket to defecate in as a reward.
There's plenty more.
All I can say is that it's a good thing George Bush was such a super Christian, or who knows what else they would have done.
God forbid, they would have forced him to use birth control.
Or worse, bake a gay cake.
Yes, we learned of forced rectal rehydration.
So it turns out George Bush isn't against men jamming stuff up their anus just if they enjoy it.
What people don't understand is there's a bad torture and there's a good torture.
The bad torture is the kind other people do.
The good torture is the kind we do.
Hey, and I say if our enemies are bad, that gives us permission to be horrible too.
You have to fight fire with fire and depraved barbarism by becoming a depraved barber who gives torturous haircuts.
Hey, Jesus knew the only way to fight evil was to become the devil himself, right?
We must remember that we not only fight the enemy to protect our lives, but to protect our way of life, which means the principles this country was founded on, the principles of our nation that are important enough to fight for, but not important enough to follow.
It's our values that separates us from the Nazis and Al-Qaeda and ISIS, our values on the dignity of every human life.
And when terrorists threaten our values, Bush solved that problem by having our values have no value.
It is kind of ironic that the only time Republicans are pro-government is when the government is doing heinous acts of barbarism in secret.
Now, a lot of torture apologists will argue releasing the report on torture will cause more terrorists to want to attack us and put us in danger.
Yes, I'm sure there are thousands of terrorists sitting around the world right now saying, the bombs that killed my family are one thing, but this report about the CIA really pushes me over the edge.
By the way, torture does work.
Thanks to torture, al-Qaeda and ISIS have completely disappeared.
Terrorism is over.
The Muslim world loves the United States, and Dick Cheney has given all his blood-soaked millions to charity.
And let's remember that when people ask if torture works, what they're really asking is, do war crimes work?
If so, then yeah, America, fuck yeah.
Hey, you know what else works?
Chemical weapons work.
Mass murder works.
Slave labor camps work.
Carlos Mancia works.
So just because it works doesn't make it right.
I say, hey, if torture really works, then can I use torture in the war against Christmas?
It's the Jimmy Dore show.
The show for...
Up-minded, lowly-livered lapdies.
The kind of people that are...
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper save.
It's hard to talk to K. Doggy.
And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore.
Welcome to this week's show.
I'm joined in the studio to my right, hilarious comedian from the Rubin Report.
It's Dave Rubin.
Hi, Dave.
How are you?
Jimmy, what are the chances they named the show the Rubin Report?
Just for me.
Isn't that something?
I'm going to guess 100%.
It was in my contract.
Across from him, hilarious comedian from Team Yasamur.
It's Robert Yasimura.
Hey, Robert, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm also on the Yasamura report.
Yes.
Interesting story.
They named it that before they met me.
This is going to kiss me.
There's a pattern.
Ohio.
Across the glass from the Young Turks, it's Edward Umana.
Hi, Edward.
How are you?
I am doing good.
Edwin.
No report.
Name after me.
You said Edward.
I keep saying it wrong.
You said that name, right?
And I thought I'd been calling him the wrong name the whole time.
Also, next to him, Steph Zamorano from the Miserable Liberal blog.
Hi, Steph.
How are you?
I'm pretty good, Jim.
Fantastic.
On the phone from New York City and Mystery Science Theater 3000, it's TV's Frank Frank Conniff.
Hi, Frank.
How you doing?
Hello there.
Yay.
Let's get to the jokes before we get to the jokes.
Did you know that Kate and Prince William were in New York City?
Did you see them?
It's really a big deal.
Two ordinary people of no particular accomplishment actually walking around.
It was really something.
And Bill Cosby, by the way, you know, these days he spends most of his times on his farm watching the chickens come home to roost.
Hello.
Hey, did you hear that Chuck Todd is going to be interviewing Dick Cheney this Sunday, and that interview has already been approved by the Commissioner of Softball.
Bang.
By the way, Congressional Budget Agreement.
They've started trying to sign this new, they have a bipartisan agreement to screw the American people to fund the government through next year.
That they might be signed by the time this goes to air.
Might be signed by the time this goes to air.
Congressional budget agreement has a provision that bails out Mr. Potter and passes the cost onto the Baileys building and loan.
Oh, by the way, Whiplash, that new movie Whiplash, it's a film that poses the question, what if the great Santini was into jazz?
If you've seen the film.
If you've seen the film, still a good film, right, Frank?
I saw it last night.
Yeah, it's good.
And by the way, movie trailers, I don't know if you're getting sick of them, but they are so misleading and deceptive.
So I'm always skeptical.
Holy fuck, that new Mad Max movie looks awesome, though.
Well, the torture report came on.
Isn't it kind of redundant to defend torture and Fox News?
You know, I've described Fox News as torture, but they would prefer me to say enhanced pontification.
That's a very clever joke, Jimmy.
You know, we just had Pearl Harbor Day.
Don't I know it?
It's what's called in my family the day things got tricky.
That's right, Robert Yasavura.
You know, the American, the United States, we responded to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor by fighting a war with Japan, the kind of mistake Bush and Cheney never made.
I don't know if you heard Rich Lowry and that guy's on left, right, and center.
He's that jagbag right-winger.
Yeah.
And he's literally said forced kissing is not sexual assault.
So to repeat, his idea of a non-assault involved the word forced.
I think he thinks that forced kissing is like your aunt comes over and like kind of pinches your cheeks.
Because I don't know if you've seen him.
That's about all the action he's getting.
And the torture report is out, and it's just a casual reminder that for eight years, some of the worst people in America were in charge of America.
The torture report is being read partly because Bush never read Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States reports.
Oh, that was astute.
Did you hear the news about Mark Wahlberg?
Did you hear about what he admitted to all the beatings that he would beat up people when he was younger?
Did you hear about that?
Oh, wow.
Right, Dave?
And who knew that Mark Wahlberg committed other hate crimes besides entourage?
No!
I thought you were going to do a big penis joke there.
No.
Come on, we go the other way over here, buddy.
All right, what's coming up on today's show?
We're going to look at the torture, the torture report, and some of the media's reaction to it.
Plus, the budget deal, the continuing resolution, but what are they calling that?
The what?
The crom?
The CR because it's the continuing resolution.
We're going to talk about that.
Plus, a lot lot more.
We got phone calls from Liam Neesum today, Haley Barber, and Luke Russert calls in, and a lot more.
us today on the Jimmy Dore Show.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
Okay, so the torture report came out, and you know, it's torturous even talking about it, but I want to look at some of the reactions.
The reaction to the torture report, I think, was even more stomach-turning.
I was watching Chris Hardball, and he had a guy named Cliff Hayes on, and he is from the center called The Defense of Democracy.
I'm pretty sure that's what it's called.
And, well, here's what he had to say.
I tend to call that the Pentagon.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
So here he's, so here's what he had to say.
Well, I think what the current director of national intelligence is warning about, what John Kerry is very worried about, is that this will be grist for the mill that our enemies out there in literally dozens of terrorist organizations will say, you see, this shows that the United States has done this, will do it, is continuing to do it, and therefore we have to show the Americans that they can't do it with impunity, and so there will be further attacks, the kinds of attacks we had, for example, in Benghazi a few years ago.
You mean so they already attacked Benghazi before this report came out?
How did they know this report was going to come out?
I mean, if that's the reason why they do stuff like that, what a jagged, these are grown-up people making this.
Yes, Frank.
I hear that if this report comes out anymore, that ISIS is going to behead people twice.
Jimmy, perhaps terrorists with time machines.
What if they have time machines?
Because plutonium, remember, you need plutonium to run the flux capacitor.
That is right.
They've gone back in time, did the Benghazi thing, saw the report.
You can see where I'm going.
I see where you're going with this, Dave.
Yeah.
That guy, everything he just said was wrong.
Of course, we just, it's so easy to point.
I mean, he gives you the punchline in his own stupid statement.
He goes, they're going to do stuff, you know, just like Benghazi, you know, like stuff like they've been doing all along.
And by the way, if anything, most people in the Middle East are like, well, that's what our police do every day.
This is not like a big deal.
And also, since when do we not do things because terrorists don't want us to do it?
You know what I mean?
Is that how we're basing our policy?
Well, if the terrorists don't want us to do it, we probably shouldn't do it.
We probably shouldn't do it.
That's a great point, Dave.
How did we ever manage to win World War II without doing it?
That's what I want to know.
Well, that's the thing.
We beat the Nazis.
We beat the Japanese.
You know, the Japanese, they used to waterboard people.
In fact, we prosecuted people for waterboarding.
Yes, we, we, at Nureberg, too, in Germany, we sentenced people to death for doing this shot.
You guys, that was last century.
Get with the times.
Everything was in black and white back then.
Yes.
The biggest danger that this report poses is a backlash from the American people and a backlash from supposedly democratic allies in Europe.
Period.
Terrorists.
Period.
The real terrorists.
The real terrorists.
You know, the French.
You know, the people who were there for the Enlightenment.
Have you seen that show, The Real Terrorist of Orange Cow?
So here he has more.
My point is, the reason I'm playing this guy is because he's emblematic of a lot of people who are coming on television, giving bogus talking points.
Like this guy, and you can't even pretend.
I can't even.
Jimmy?
Yeah.
By the way, I just right before we started tonight, I watched the Chris Matthews show, and he had two Republicans and one Democrat, and the topic of discussion, as it was on the other show that you're talking about, was, does torture work?
Does torture work?
We're going to get to that question in a second.
So here this guy goes on.
This will stir all that up.
I think there is a point of that.
I think you're right about the terminology, and it is difficult.
It's a difficult debate because a lot of people would say, for example, that you should never waterboard again.
This was not used routinely.
It was used only on a few very important al-Qaeda terrorists, such as colleague Sheikh Mohammed, in order to get them to reveal information that most of us still think was valuable.
But then the question is, can you have sleep deprivation?
Is that torture or is that aggressive and coercive interrogation that you need when you're in a situation where American lives are at stake if people will not talk, if they say, get me a lawyer, you can't do this to me.
I'm not going to tell you anything.
As again, colleague Sheikh Mohammed did.
Okay, so I know the problem with, I don't mind when people are wrong.
I know this guy's lying.
He doesn't believe what he's saying.
He's smarter.
He's smart.
Of course, he's heard the argument that I just gave you for the, in fact, the guy gave us the punchline in his own explanation.
And then Chris Matthews, this is from the Chris Matthews show from two days ago, and he's just sitting there like, oh, that's a great idea.
So here's what Chris.
So then even the guy, here's the guy, David Korn from Mother Jones, who this guy's, I would consider him to be right on everything.
And here, you know, I mean, he has the right position on stuff.
And here Chris Matthews turns over to him and says this.
When do you think it works?
Do you think it works?
I'm not sure it works or not because I haven't been there.
This report is supposed to be.
No, you think torture works.
I say, I don't know.
Just in general common sense terms.
My guess is that usually it doesn't.
In the book I did with my- The CIA had already determined that torture doesn't work.
Before Bush started doing this, before 9-11, the CIA already knew this stuff didn't work.
And the reason why they had what they called seral training was because they knew other countries would torture our people.
So in a controlled environment, they gave them a taste of what it would be like so that you could have some kind of an idea on how to protect yourself against it.
So anyway, so even Korn for Christian sake.
Jimmy, he did mention, the first gentleman did mention just a few al-Qaeda members.
Just a few.
And Jimmy, let's remember that American lives are at stake.
Yes.
And we know how valuable American lives are.
Can I just say, you know, Corn says, he says, I don't know, implying that he hasn't read the report yet.
That's basically what he's saying.
But then Chris Matthews come back.
No, no, no, just common sense.
Common sense.
Which, no, Corn's going, I would need to read the whole thing first.
That's what you're supposed to do.
David Corn saying that, and I'm with you, Jimmy.
I've always liked David Corn, but him saying that is kind of like when conservatives say, hey, I'm no climate scientist.
Yeah.
Why no?
Yeah.
But there are facts about torture.
They're presenting it like it's a debate and it's opinion.
There are facts.
The fact is that it doesn't work.
Yeah, but I disagree in terms of what's going on at this moment.
I think David has it right, which is that David Corn is being a journalist and Chris Matthews is just being a blowhard douchebag.
And so they're at cross purposes.
So what David Corn is saying is as a responsible journalist, I don't know how to answer that question.
Why is that a debate now?
You know, for decades, you didn't hear any journalists debating whether torture worked or not.
It was just a given that we're the United States of America and we don't do that kind of thing.
Yeah, all of a sudden.
Now they're debating the nuances of what's torture and what is it, and if it works, and if it doesn't, it just shows that since the Bush years, our public discord has just got in the toilet.
Yes, exactly.
It reveals a lack of moral compass about the American people.
The media is just as responsible for this as the government.
No doubt about it, Frank.
I mean, here is Chris Matthews having this as if it's a debate.
And let's listen to what the rest David Corn has to say.
Izzakot hubris, we came up with a guy who was tortured and then told the Egyptians about al-Qaeda doing chemical weapons training and got into one of Bush's pre-war speeches.
And it turns out he was making it up all along.
There are numerous cases when tortured people gave us bad information.
Okay, so at least he kind of redeemed himself there at the end.
So now he asked, he's talking common sense.
This is Chris Matthews, common sense.
Do you think it works?
Common sense.
That's what he said.
Common sense.
Okay, ready?
I think a common sense answer is it depends.
Oh, my God!
Let's not look at the empirical evidence in front of us, but I'm Chris Matthews and I have an opinion on everything both ways in most cases.
I think a common sense answer is it depends.
And this is a man that has all the facts.
He has all the facts available to him.
He is such a single year.
Chris Matthews is a depraved subhuman right now.
Because if you're going to pretend that you don't know better, that there's a moral, there's a defect in your brain and in your moral character.
And he's doing it for ratings because he doesn't want to tick off who he considers to be right-wingers who watch his show.
He's admitted that he does this, by the way.
I'm not projecting.
He's admitted that he's always thinking about his audience when he broadcasts.
So that's what that is.
He knows better.
Common sense sometimes.
I think a common sense answer is it depends.
It depends.
Common sense.
And here's that guy, Peter Engel.
You know what, Jimmy?
Saying depends makes sense because there's a lot of shit in that state.
Now, listen to Peter Engel.
I love this guy.
He's one of the only guys doing real reporting in foreign countries and in war zones.
So in a certain sense, I think it's very good that it's out there, that people don't, they appreciate and are disgusted by what happened in this country after 9-11 and hopefully never do it again.
And there's another hand.
What is on the other hand?
Wait, wait.
But at the other side, and this is why I said I had mixed feelings, the CIA felt it had authorization to do this.
It felt it was asked to do this.
It felt the president knew what was going on.
The president and certainly his national security Staff were getting regular reports of the information.
Certainly, senior leaders were going to the CIA and telling them you guys are doing great work to keep America safe.
And now we have a change of administration and they're being punished for it.
So I can feel a sense of betrayal on their behalf as well, that they did something that they were asked to do that was brutal and that you wouldn't want to err in public.
And now they're being scrutinized for it.
Oh, no, they're being scrutinized.
Oh, no.
But perhaps the most important revelation in this report is not about the torture itself, but rather about the legal culpability of the CIA.
The report contains a key passage on page 33 revealing that senior lawyers at the CIA in mid-2002, at the very beginning of the CIA's program, drafted a letter to the Attorney General in which it expressly acknowledged that the interrogation tactics that came to be known as enhanced interrogation techniques violated the U.S. torture statute.
The draft letter requested that the Attorney General provide the CIA with a formal declaration of prosecution in advance.
Basically, a promise not to prosecute or immunity.
The document was shared even with the CIA interrogators involved in the nascent program.
From the beginning, in other words, key CIA officials were well aware that these techniques were clearly unlawful, and those are the guys that Peter Engel feels sorry for.
Does LegalZoom make those documents where I could do something in advance and just hand it out to people so I could get away with some shit?
But shouldn't we be pissed at Congress?
We should be pissed at everybody.
We should be pissed at everybody.
And for him to say that he feels sorry for the CIA because they felt that they were authorized to do this, they already are admitting they knew what they were doing was wrong.
And so when you go ahead and do something that you know is wrong, that makes you a criminal.
It doesn't matter who tells you because we know that if the president or any officer gives you an order that is illegal, it is your duty to disobey an illegal command.
We already know this.
And so what Peter Engel is doing is saying, yeah, these guys were criminal, tortures, depraved subhumans that I feel sorry for.
These are the good guys, by the way, on TV.
These are the good guys.
I'm going to MSNBC.
This is the liberal outlet.
So it just goes ahead and proves my point.
Once again, there is no left in America left.
And you know what?
When they say that these CIA agents felt they were following orders or they're feeling betrayed, aren't we really pretending that these men have feelings?
Do you know who's betrayed stuff?
Aren't they sociopaths?
Are they there ever to conduct this type of torture?
And they already know what the rules are.
They already know what the Geneva Conventions are.
They already knew.
The Bush administration paid more attention to a comic book convention than the Geneva Convention.
So the people who should feel betrayed, Peter Engel, are the American people who were betrayed by the CIA, the Attorney General, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and now they're being betrayed by the President of the United States because he's not going to prosecute those people, which, by the way, you don't get a choice to prosecute war crimes or not prosecute war crimes.
It is mandated.
It is your duty to prosecute war crimes.
You don't have a choice, which is why George Bush can't travel internationally.
Joining us on the phone right now, it's MSNBC's Luke Russert.
Luke, thanks for stopping by, buddy.
Joining us on the phone right now, it's MSNBC's Luke Russert.
Luke, thanks for stopping by, buddy.
Hey, Jimmy, what's up?
You know, not much happened here.
It's been kind of a slow news week.
A slow news week?
What are you talking about?
It's been an insanely busy news week.
Really?
Okay, if you said so, I'll take your word for it.
What about the torture report, Luke?
That was big news.
Oh, yeah, right.
Man, that was some gnarly stuff, huh?
It was the first any of us had heard that America had engaged in torture.
Luke, we've known for years that torture has been happening.
No, not really.
Did you ever hear that word torture said on network news in the New York Times?
Okay, granted, a compliant media refused to tell the truth, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
Jimmy, we in the media report whatever the people in power tell us to report.
Anything else would be a repudiation of journalistic ethics?
I used some fancy grown-up type language there.
Where do I collect my T-body?
Say it again, please.
Where do I collect my T-body?
Luke, what's been repudiated are the core values that America was supposed to stand for.
Hey, I agree, Jimmy.
Dude, it was totally morally bogus that those prisoners got tortured by the CIA.
Oh, that reminds me, I've got a breaking news scoop for you.
Really?
What's that, Luke?
Well, I've been told by multiple sources that CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency.
That's an interesting informational tidbit.
Who knew?
I think everybody knew.
Luke, but I'm glad to hear that you're opposed to torture.
Oh, hell yeah.
The CIA bros were so wrong to do what they did.
I mean, when they were torturing those prisoners, did they realize how bad the optics would be on that?
Did they have any clue that they'd be hurting the Republicans in 2016?
It just makes me sick to my stomach to know that there are government officials who would engage in an act that caused some awkward moments for Mitch McConnell.
It's just not clutch, man.
Luke, I think you're missing the point.
No way, Jose.
I am not missing the point.
These tortures cause real human suffering.
Jimmy, I was just at John Boehner's office and he was really suffering.
Partly because he was hungover, but also because this whole torture thing was screwing up his day.
So you're saying that real victims of torture, you're saying that the real victim of torture are John Boehner and Mitch McConnell?
No, man, not just them.
Lots of political operators and media consultants have been scarred for life.
I don't know if you saw Mike Allen's morning playbook on Politico, but the news is devastating.
Republicans lost the week, Jimmy.
They lost the week.
Well, not all Republicans are on the same page with this, Luke.
For instance, John McCain spoke out against torture on the Senate floor.
Come on, Jimmy.
Get real.
Serial, dude.
John McCain actually was tortured during the Vietnam War, so he was hardly qualified to speak out about this.
Luke, that doesn't make any sense.
He said to you, it's already tortured.
He's not qualified to speak out on this.
The logic of that escapes me.
Can you explain it?
Well, sure.
It's like this.
Let's say someone said to you that they thought Led Zeppelin was the greatest man of all time.
You'd be like, okay, okay, cool.
Then I should cut out that person saying it was in Led Zeppelin.
That would totally invalidate what he was saying.
No.
Well, I'm sorry if you can't comprehend political science, Jimmy.
For now, let's just agree that John Bonham is still the greatest drummer alive.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Luke, he's not, you know, you know, never mind.
Luke.
Yes, I do.
Luke, I remember when he died.
Luke, thanks for joining.
You are old, dude.
Yes, I know.
Luke, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Say it before I go.
Did you want me to say both sides do it while I come?
Yes or no.
Offer is coming soon.
Luke, you did that once, and I've already asked you never to do it again.
I've already asked you to never do it again.
I've already asked you to never do it again.
I'm sorry, I don't remember what an orgasm feels like anymore.
Goodbye, Luke.
All right, that was Luke Russert.
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But right now, let's get to the second half.
We have a hilarious phone call with Liam Neeson coming up later.
But right now, there's some more torture talk happening.
So let's get to that.
Thank you.
So, common sense thing is that sometimes you have to torture.
Common sense says that.
But here's, I love that they say it's a debate.
Here's Chris Matthews, right?
We just had Jim Wolsey on right now.
So he brought on a CIA director who I don't have the clip for because I can't play every clip in the world.
But here's what he said.
He had a former CIA director who was a CIA director when Bill Clinton was president, and this is what he says.
We just had Jim Wolsey on right now.
He was director of central intelligence under Bill Clinton.
Yeah.
And he said it wasn't torture.
So we're still arguing whether it is or not.
No, you are arguing whether it is or not.
And the criminals from the CIA who protect their own criminal buddies and institution are saying that.
Isn't it amazing that the people who are being charged with crime say they weren't crimes?
When does that ever happen except every goddamn time?
So he's pretending there's a debate.
So now he brings on a smart guy.
So here, this guy lays to rest.
He tells Chris Matthews in no uncertain terms, and this should end every stupid question that Chris Matthews is going to bring up on his show.
But obviously it doesn't.
Let's listen to what he, what do you have something to say, Robert?
I just, look, the question of whether torture works or doesn't work is not a common sense question.
Right.
Okay.
You know what is a common sense question?
What is torture?
What is common sense question is, should we use war crimes as a matter of policy?
That's a big moral question.
What I think is the most basic, simple question is, if you showed this, what we're doing to this guy to an eight-year-old.
Would it shock the conscience?
Would the eight-year-old call that torture?
And yes.
That, as a matter of pure common sense, no one except for these assholes is debating what we call this.
So here's a guy who lays down the law to Chris Matthews.
Thanks.
Whether waterboarding was torture or not was pretty clearly decided by the United States after World War II in the Pacific theater is equivalent to the Nuremberg trials.
The United States prosecuted, convicted, and then punished dozens of Japanese intelligence officers and soldiers for what was found to be a war crime, which was waterboarding.
Okay, so clear-cut.
This end of discussion.
Yeah, and I guess they just went home after that.
But this guy had to clear up some more stuff for Chris.
The reason that's done to American intelligence officers and to military personnel, the SEER training that the director referred to, is because it's an important part of our training.
I went through it myself.
We are at risk of being captured, kidnapped, and then tortured.
And so the training is to teach us what it is like in a controlled environment, how bad it can be, and to learn ways that you can maintain some shred of your individuality and not go crazy.
So it's training to protect us from the effects of torture.
The sick transmogrification occurred after 9-11 when what was torture resistance training was turned into an interrogation to obtain intelligence, which is not what it does at all.
It breaks people.
It doesn't obtain intelligence.
And that's clearly known by the military, by the intelligence community, and by our JAG Corps, the legal corps of the military and the United States government, up until after 9-11 with this strange twist.
So he's saying everybody knew this.
The legal department, the people in defense, JAG lawyers knew this.
Everybody, we all know this.
This isn't a secret.
We all know this doesn't work.
And so let me also make it clear.
We didn't torture people to keep us safe.
The reason why Dick Cheney ordered torture Was because when you torture someone, you get them to say things you want them to say.
So he wanted them to say that Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction to cover for his illegal war for oil that Colin Powell's chief of staff already revealed to us that it was a war for oil.
So we know it was a war for oil, and now we know that he ordered torture.
And why do you order torture?
You order torture because everybody in the intelligence community, in the legal community, in the military, in and out, knew it doesn't work.
So why would you still order it?
Oh, you would order it because you want them to give a false confession so it would cover for your illegal war.
And that's the part people are forgetting.
People are thinking that Dick Cheney is just a dark guy who went too far in trying to protect America.
No, it was way worse than that.
He's a nefarious subhuman psychopath who is willing to slaughter people, order war crimes to cover it up, all for money.
Also, also, you know, when you look at the Bush administration's war on terror, starting with the fact that they let 9-11 happen and they didn't pay attention to the bin Laden determined attack in the U.S., and they allowed that to happen.
And so afterwards, and you can point to any of numerous things of showing how incompetent they were in terms of the war and in terms of fighting terror.
And I think that for them, torture was just a way of them convincing themselves that they were tough, you know, that they were really doing something to cover up the fact that everything they did to fight terror was basically wrong.
So you're basically saying that they were just trying to look busy.
Well, yeah, and it was also just look how tough we are.
And you know what?
People, you know, of course, Fox News bought it, and a great portion of the rest of the media bought it as well.
I would like to point out one thing that I think is really interesting in what that guy just said, which is, and it's subtle, but it's there.
He said, you know, torture doesn't really work to get intelligence, but he said 100% of the time, if you do it long enough, it breaks people's minds.
Yes.
He said, I couldn't believe I just heard that guy say that.
Like, he said, torture's only purpose is its own end.
And so where do we come off even coming close to defending this?
So let's remember, and when people say, they go, well, you want trying to be nice to criminals, you're trying to be nice to terrorists.
What if it really works?
The main reason why you don't do it is because it reveals a depravity on you.
It's a lack of inhumanness.
The same people who think a clump of cells in a woman's uterus has the dignity of life can't recognize that dignity when it's actually in a live human being.
And by the way, if you need to.
And that's why you don't torture Dave, because you either recognize the dignity of human beings and we have a moral compass or you don't.
It's not sometimes, like Jon Stewart said, if you don't follow your values when you're scared and it's tough to do it, then they're not values.
They're just hobbies.
Yeah, well, the depravity goes to the things that they make them do.
So fine, the waterboarding, you know, waking them up, making them stand, things like that.
But think about all the weird sexual shit that they were doing.
Hummus in their asses and all that stuff.
Like, so these people were depraved.
Like, you don't just come up with that.
Right.
If the three of us were in a room trying to figure out some way to hurt somebody, we wouldn't act.
Let's get some hummus and jam it in his ass.
It just wouldn't come up.
Let me just say, you wouldn't even make, honestly, if you saw it happening, you wouldn't make somebody stay awake for 48 hours.
You would see what you were doing to that person.
That alone, like, that sounds everybody's like, well, that's just sort of sleep deprivation.
If you were sitting there watching a guy going through that, there is no way you would let that happen.
So let's just, that is torture in and of itself.
Everything that happened after that was that, which is way worse.
It requires a person with no conscience at all.
Yes.
So that's why, so that's, you know, when they, when we have the death penalty in America, and that which makes it sound like a football penalty, but it's actually, what you're doing is you're murdering.
Also, statistics prove this has not ever been a deterrent people murdering.
It doesn't work.
And what the point, the point being is that it's really just state murder.
We do Orwellian speak, like we call it enhanced interrogation techniques.
Instead of torture, we call it the death penalty instead of state murder, a defenseless person who's strapped to a gurney.
You're going to murder them.
So you can't do that in war.
You can't take someone out who's been trying to kill you, cuff his hands behind his back, and shoot him.
You can't do that.
But we do it in the United States every day.
And guess what, though?
When you go out for a firing squad, they have three people go out with rifles.
Only one of them has a bullet.
Why do they do that?
It's because we all know that what we're doing is wrong.
And we don't want that person who actually is the person to do it.
We want them to be able to say, I didn't do it.
It wasn't me.
I'm not a depraved human being.
If the word depraved means anything, it has to apply to murdering people who are defenseless.
It has to.
Okay, it has to apply.
So that's why even when they do lethal injection, they don't do lethal injection instead of the firing squad because they're being nicer to the guy they're killing.
They're doing it so that we don't feel more like the monsters that we are.
Again, they do it with the three syringes.
Nobody knows who's giving them the lethal dose.
Why do they do that?
Because we know what we're doing is subhuman and depraved.
That's why.
Now, here's a moron, Chris Matthews.
He's kind of stumbles because he's such a moron.
Now, this guy already explained to him why everything's wrong.
Why you can't, that guy just played for you.
Now, Chris Matthews is talking to the ex-head of the CIA, and listen to what happens.
I think if the question is, can you keep somebody from al-Qaeda who knows about, like as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did, who knows about forthcoming attacks, if you can find out enough that you can stop that, is it okay to scare people?
I'd say, sure, it's okay to scare people.
Is it okay to pull out their fingernails?
No.
Because it wouldn't work?
Well, working is not the only.
Like, it doesn't cross.
It wouldn't work, but it's a good question because it kind of stumps this guy for a second, right?
And in a sense, but Chris Matthews isn't asking it for that purpose.
He's like, why?
Because it wouldn't work.
Because if it works, I'm already, I'm common sense.
I'm good for it.
Only criterion.
Go ahead.
Go ahead, Frank.
No, I was just going to say, so pulling someone's fingers out, that's wrong.
But sticking stuff up their ass, that's humane, I guess.
Yes, that's humane.
But anything's okay according to Chris Matthews if it works.
Hang on, he keeps pressing him.
Let's listen.
Say to pull out their fingernails?
No.
Because it wouldn't work?
Well, working is not the only criterion.
But if it's 3,000 people, why wouldn't you pull out some fingernails?
I think there need to be some clear lines.
And pulling out fingernails is clearly torture.
Why?
And we shouldn't work.
See, this is my problem.
If it does work, why would you have a line to stop at?
Because if you could save 3,000 lives at the cost of one life even, wouldn't you go for the 3,000 to save them from jumping off a 100-floor building, that's what it came to.
I think there have to be some lines for all of us in this very difficult world of distinguishing between what we would do in order to protect the country on the one hand and what the ethical considerations are on the other.
So he's just saying he doesn't have a reason why we have to have a line.
He doesn't understand why there has to be a line.
That's the ex-head of the CIA who says we shouldn't be pulling fingernails out.
He can't really tell you why, which dummy Chris Matthews got him to reveal.
I know why.
I just explained and articulated why, because it shows a depravity and a sickness on our part.
It shows a sickness.
It drags our culture down.
Then we don't have values anymore.
Then we've become what we're trying to fight against.
You can't become what you're trying to fight against.
Like we said in the opening, yes, the principles of this country are worth fighting for, but apparently are not worth following, Dave.
Well, he also lives in the real world and has dealt with this stuff.
That's the beauty of this.
Chris Matthews is totally living in a fantasy land here.
He's living in the 20th 24 show.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you have it, and it can happen.
And there's just no reason to think that that's ever happened or ever would happen.
I agree.
You are correct.
You are correct.
You know, Jimmy, today CIA Director Brennan came out and he said he made the statement that we had little experience housing detainees and precious few of our officers were trained interrogators.
And we fell short when it came to holding some of our officers accountable for their mistakes.
I'm going to play some clips from him.
But the important thing to remember there is that when we talk about the CIA, the people who were the trained interrogators didn't do this.
They all said, I'm not going to be a part of this.
Hey, we know it doesn't work because I'm a trained interrogator.
So I've studied interrogation and we know what works and what doesn't.
And I'm not going to commit a war crime to do something that doesn't even work.
So that's why they got all these guys who had no idea what they were doing.
And by the way, you know...
Yeah, it was.
It was.
And by the way, the two guys who came up with the ideas to waterboard and to do the rectal rehydrations and all this stuff, they were two psychologists that had no training in counterterrorism.
They had no training in interrogation.
They didn't speak Arabic.
They didn't know anything about anything.
And the government paid them to come up with these programs.
And do you know how much the government paid them?
I'm sure it wasn't much, Jimmy.
It wasn't much.
Two people got paid $180 million.
I'm sorry, what?
$180 million was the contract.
When Barack Obama became president, he canceled the program and canceled the contract.
So they only got $80 million.
Oh, so Joe, the Vice President Joe Biden has a great saying.
He says, don't tell me what you value.
Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value.
So if you look at what we value, in the middle of firing teachers from coast to coast and raising class sizes to 40 kids per class, we're paying two psychologists $180 million to come up with a program to commit war crimes.
And like I've said before, when they say we don't have money, they don't mean we don't have money for endless trillion-dollar wars, trillion-dollar bank bailouts, oil subsidies, and prison construction.
What they mean is they don't have money for teachers and health care and immigration reform and hospitals and roads and bridges or infrastructure or anything that helps you.
They've got endless money for everything else and this proves it.
And this reveals a sickness of our society.
And anytime anybody comes out as a whistleblower against these policies or against like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, they are vilified.
And still, Hardball doesn't get it straight or right anytime regarding these issues.
They just, you know, they just give you basically the government's position.
And I was watching CNN earlier today, and there was a crawl underneath the screen as they were talking.
And it was news items about the torture report.
But every one of the every item in the crawl described it as the Senate report on enhanced interrogation.
They still won't use the term torture.
They're still protecting our government.
And they're going along with everything still.
It's really horrible.
Much of the information in this report is new to the public, but a lot of it would have been uncovered during a detailed torture investigation Attorney General Eric Holder conducted during President Obama's first term.
And after carefully examining the evidence, Eric Holder decided not to prosecute anyone for the CIA's torture.
But the Obama administration has had a different attitude when it comes to those who revealed the existence of the CIA torture program.
In 2012, the Obama administration charged former CIA official John Kerakou for leaking classified information related to the torture program to reporters.
He's threatened with decades in prison.
Kirkar was forced to plead guilty and accepted a 30-month sentence.
He is in prison right now.
I mean, that tells you all you need to know.
The system is way bigger than the people.
So even if Obama wanted to do the right thing here, the office of the presidency, I think, won't allow him to tell Holder to do the right thing.
Eric Garner, the guy who killed him, not in prison, the guy who videotaped him killing him got charged.
The guys who committed torture, ordered torture, covered up torture, lied to the American people, lied to the Senate, lied to Congress, lied to the president about torture, committed war crimes, not being prosecuted.
The guy who told us about war crimes, he's in jail right now.
Sure.
That's the kind of president we have.
That's the kind of country we have.
That's the kind of sick society we have.
And you're not going to hear that on Chris Matthews, the liberal news show on MSNBC, owned by MS, which is Microsoft, which is trying to privatize education and wreck public education, and NBC, which is a bank and was a defense contractor all the way through the Iraq war.
So they're war profiteers.
They're banks.
That's who's giving us our information.
And then half the country are such big morons, they think that the media is liberal.
Yeah, and as a matter of fact, our favorite, Chuck Todd, he actually did an interview with BrightBart.com a month or so ago, and he said that it was all part of his campaign to make conservatives believe that he's not going to be as hard of him.
He's not going to, Neither press is not going to be as liberal as it was before.
What?
Yes.
Fuck.
*Bell rings* *Bell rings*
Jimmy, it's Liam Neeson.
I know, Mr. Neeson, how are you?
Jimmy, how many times do I have to tell you?
It's Liam.
Mr. Neeson is the guy I killed and assumed his identity.
Please don't feel comfortable calling a celebrity of your level by his first name.
I sent you muffin basket to get you to call me Liam.
I sent you two Vermont teddy bears.
One actually named Liam.
What's this train to take, Jimmy?
I'm sorry, Liam.
I didn't know it meant that much to you.
Jimmy.
Yes.
As you know, I listen to you here in New York on WBAI.
So by the way.
New York Tone for Tuvon Throat Singing.
Yes, I did know that.
And of course, you're on here at 3 a.m.
Yeah, we're not very happy about that still.
Right between the lesbian vegan inspiration hour.
Yep.
New things macrame with your host, Sheldon Starcatcher.
Yeah, I don't know.
As long as a citizen is within 60 feet of their transmitter at 3 a.m., they can hear your clarion song.
Unless there's a fun drive or someone turns on the vacuum cleaner.
Yes, this is true.
Thanks for that.
Oh, no, Jimmy.
Thank you.
You are like the last beacon in this wasteland.
Corrupt and festering.
I think you might be overstating the situation there, Liam.
The so-called cops martyr the man, Jimmy.
It's true.
They choked Eric Arner to death this past summer.
In Staten Island, once the cultural center of the world, the Paris of the Transcript area.
I'm pretty sure that's not true.
And the authorities do nothing, Jimmy.
Well, yeah, they failed to indict the cop involved, and a lot of the people are upset about it.
So, are they upset?
Are they wringing their hands and carrying signs and other pursing American whatnot?
Well, yes, that's definitely been happening.
You know what we did when I was a lad and this sort of thing happened?
Yeah, kind of.
We bombed a cafe and get drunk and use our fists like fleshy clubs of justice.
Well, I hear you.
I think a lot of the frustration comes from people feeling like they can't do more.
I can do more, Jimmy, and I will.
What this city needs is an avenging angel.
Assemble for justice amidst the chaos.
Liam, are you maybe thinking of becoming some sort of vigilante?
Me?
Oh, no, Jimmy Door.
Who would believe such a thing?
But a man of my fame and stature is in fact the mask force holding back the tides of evil.
Liam, I'm really getting the impression you're thinking about this.
Oh, I'm just an actor, Jimmy Door.
One man.
And how can one man possibly make a difference?
Even if he does become the icon of hope that the city needs, Liam, I think maybe the cause of reform might be better served by your celebrity, like when you publicly sided with the Central Park horse carriage guys.
The fact that you remember that warms me, Jimmy.
It truly does.
Why don't you just use your status to put a face on this cause?
Perhaps I will, Jimmy.
Perhaps I will.
But also, perhaps another front will be open.
But also, perhaps another front will be opened by a force that emerges from the shadows.
Riding atop his trusty Steve Marmalade.
He will be a grand jury of one.
Liam, I'm begging you not to do what you are obviously thinking about doing.
Your concern for my safety is touching, Jimmy Door.
But, of course, some things are bigger than the safety of one Oscar-nominated actor.
Okay, Liam, I gotta go.
Yes, Jimmy, I quite understand.
I too have to go.
The night calls to me now when the firemen and predators come out to play.
But tonight, maybe, someone wants to play back.
I don't get that.
Need me healer.
Okay, well, good talking to you.
Goodbye, my friend.
Ailen Bodar.
Hey, I want to let everybody know December 26th and 27th.
If you're looking for something to do and you're in the Los Angeles area and you're sick of your family because it's the holidays, why don't you come out and listen to me make fun of my family?
I'll be telling jokes the 26th and 27th of December.
That's a Friday and Saturday after Christmas at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank.
There's links for tickets right over at JimmyDoorComedy.com.
And guess what's in the premium content this week?
Liam Neeson calls back in.
We talk for about 20 minutes and he shows us all the impressions that he's working on.
That's right.
Liam Neeson does impressions.
And it's hilarious.
So that's in this week's premium content.
And how do you become a premium member?
You go over to JimmyDoorComedy.com.
You click on premium, you make your $5 donation, and then you get access to the premium content.
It's only $5 a month, but if you pay all at once, if you pay it once, we'll give you a month free.
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And thanks to everybody who does that and is a premium member.
You all become great people.
You get a ticket out of purgatory and into heaven if you believe in that sort of thing.
That's what I was told in a dream last night by Pat Robertson.
So thanks, everybody who supports the show.
And thanks if you can't support the show, let your friends know about it.
That's a great way to help.
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There's lots of ways to help out.
I think I'm dying.
They can't diagnose what's wrong with me.
They thought it was bronchitis, then they thought it was something else.
And they keep giving me drugs and it's not working.
I just talked to my buddy Wes Clark Jr.
He thinks it's because I have a wheat allergy because I'm Irish.
I don't know.
We'll see.
I'm going to stop eating wheat for a couple of days, but I feel like shit all the time.
And this is not good.
So we'll see what happens.
So if anybody's a doctor, let me know.
It's hard to get my doctor on the phone.
We live in America, but it's still not the easiest thing.
Okay, that's it for this week.
I'll see you December 26, 27.
We'll see you on the premium.
This today's show was written.
That's right.
It was written by Frank Connant, Mike McRae, Robert Yasimura, Mark Van Landuitt, and Steph Zamorano.
All the voices performed by the one and only the inimitable, Mike McRae.
Okay, that's it for this week.
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