Jon Stewart took on Cliff May of "The Foundation for Defense of Democracies" tonight. The interview went well over the usual 6 minute interview that takes place.
It literally was another take down similar to the Cramer take down and for one, it felt good to finally hear someone say so honestly why what we did is wrong.
Clips after the jump.
First, we have to recognize that the prisoners we take are still humans. Paraphrasing Stewart, when they are on the battlefield and when they are captured prisoners who cannot do us any harm--there is a difference. Bombing a militia who are well armed with explosives and an Al Qaeda safe house is not the same as using torture, and they should not be compared. When we take a person under our custody, there are certain limits on what is and is not acceptable. How you define what is acceptable and not is clear--you don't torture.
Secondly, we have used long complex defenses that a legal team wrote up in order to blur the lines between what is and is not torture. I really am repeating most of what Stewart states, but this is true: We prosecuted Japanese for doing the same acts to American soldiers. Our excuse for doing torture has been that there was an imminent threat, so its okay. If anyone had imminent threat in WWII it was Japan when we used atomic weapons. This is hypocrisy at its best. We cannot be reputable if we are hypocrites.
Last, it is just wrong. Why can we just grow a backbone and stand up for what is humane. I'm not asking for us to not interrogate--but cruel and punishment that shocks the conscious is not called for. What we have done has been used as a recruitment tool for terrorist, and it has put us in a very precarious predicament.
Please note, these clips are unedited and may contain NSFW language. Also, the comments aren't working for some reason--will work on trying to fix that
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