Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Monday used a hostage crisis at a Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney to lash out at liberals who she said made the CIA into “bad guys” for using torture on detainees. During Fox & Friends coverage of the hostage standoff, Hasselbeck pivoted to an interview Vice President Dick Cheney had done with NBC News after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report…. “Meanwhile, the actual individuals here at home who have been looking into and trying to stop attacks like this, and perhaps future hostage situations — we are still at war, indeed, with ISIS and terrorism — are the CIA,” she explained. “And have been painted as the bad guys at home.”
It’s a question I find myself asking from time to time: If brains were dynamite, would Elisabeth Hasselbeck be able to blow her nose? I mean, what else could one think when a blonde (and empty) talking head turns the hostage tragedy in Sydney into an excuse to bash Liberals? Even worse, Hasselbeck accepts at face value that torture works…when there’s considerable evidence to support the argument that it doesn’t, and in fact yields information that’s incorrect, inaccurate, and untrustworthy. Turns out that people under extreme duress will do and say just about anything to make it stop. Go figure.
Despite what Hasselbeck may think (if “think” is the right word), we don’t live in Jack Bauer’s world. There’s no “ticking time bomb” scenario, in which a bad man knows the location of a bomb and the only way to get the information out of him is to torture it out of him. If the real world was like a script from “24,” torture might make sense…because torture ALWAYS works on television, ESPECIALLY when Jack Bauer’s involved.
Unfortunately for Hasselbeck, real life is not at all like the fantasy world we live in, and the CIA’s torture program did little if anything to keep America safer. IF torture showed demonstrable results, THEN she might have an argument. The problem is that torture doesn’t work, and there’s no available evidence to the contrary.
Then’s the reality that torture, besides being immoral and counter to our values, is illegal. Is Hasselback really advocating that the CIA is and should be above the law- because they’re protecting us from ISIS and terrorism, don’tchaknow?? It’s interesting that an authoritarian Conservative like Hasselbeck seems to be preaching that invoking the “terrorism” defense renders the CIA above the law and immune to being held accountable for their actions.
It seems that, for some authoritarian Conservatives, the rule of law is absolute and iron-clad, except when it’s not. Even more interesting is how they, and only they, know when it’s not. And all you pansy Liberals should just shut up and let the CIA do its job.
So much for the rule of law…and our reputation in the international community.
