Today's episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews featured substitute host David Shuster. The segment, "Levin vs. Cheney on torture memos" (MSNBC video embedded below) included guests David Corn (C.Q. Politics, Mother Jones) and conservative columnist Terry Jeffrey, also an Editor-In-Chief for Cybercast News Service.
The video begins with clips from former vice president Dick Cheney, and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI). Relevant comments are block-quoted below:
Dick Cheney (speech at the American Enterprise Institute, May 21, 2009):
"Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release."
Carl Levin (speech to the Foreign Policy Association, May 27, 2009):
“Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked,” Levin said of documents he has also seen. “But those classified documents say nothing about the numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction.”
David Shuster then asks his guests, "So who is right?"
Terry Jeffrey begins by saying "He (Senator Levin) is flat-out wrong," and in a fast-talking, flailing attempt at cherry-picking, he refers to the New York Times publishing of the Justice Department's release of the torture memos, referring specifically to "the May 30, 2005 memo, page 10." Jeffrey obfuscates facts, in stating that planned terrorist attacks on Los Angeles were averted because of the use of torture enhanced interrogation techniques upon Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Jeffrey also engages in an appeal-to-authority argument, in a claim to have called the CIA, asking, "Do you guys stand behind the factual information in this memo, that this attack was stopped? They said 'yes.'" Conveniently left out of his argument is the issue of whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" proved effectice, as Shuster calls forth, referencing the testimony of Ali Soufan, while transitioning between panelist responses.
David Corn responds, armed with the same page 10 from the May 30th document. From the memo, Corn quotes (regarding EIT's): "There is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness." He continues, in mock-feigned surprise, to agree with Cheney in wanting full release of the documents.
The discussion threatens to devove because of Jeffrey's attempts to dominate by using this false argument; that because the specified memo refers to interrogators having using E.I.T.'s, then it is these techniques that thwarted a planned attack on Los Angeles. Shuster retorts that of the three detainees who were waterboarded, one had shut down after having given information prior to torturing (per testimony of Ali Soufan); the other had been tortured in an attempt to coerce a link between Iraq and Al Qaida, and ended up providing false information.
Closing it up here, I thought that tonight, David Shuster showed real assertiveness in his news skills. I don't follow him regularly, so I am not sure if he is consistently as good as seen here. But Shuster proved that he is no silly news "fratboy," as haughtily claimed by right-wing pundits after his epic Teabagger Commentary. Good on David Corn, for being well-prepared, if not as forcefully direct as Shuster.
While on the contrarian side, Terry Jeffrey sounded about as logical as one who argues, "Well, I agree with you! Air contains oxygen, which we need to survive. But air is a threat to us, because it carries pollution..."