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Liz Cheney Asked To Stay On MSNBC Set To Take On Robinson
Earlier today, we posted some video of a combative exchange on MSNBC's Morning Joe between Liz Cheney and Eugene Robinson on the subject of Dick Cheney's vocal support for torture.
Here it is again:
But it's noticeable from the start that Liz Cheney seems intent not just on arguing with Robinson, as you'd expect, but on challenging him at every turn, and almost forcibly preventing him from laying out a coherent argument in favor of probing the torture program that her father helped engineer.
That's why this tweet from Chris Licht, the producer of Morning Joe, was so interesting. Licht twittered:
Cheney asked to stay on set to talk to Eugene.. glad she did. Great conversation.
In other words, Liz Cheney specifically requested to stay longer than her allotted time, in order to prevent Robinson from making a case against torture and the ex-veep. And MSNBC, knowing it would make for good TV, obliged.
If nothing else, it gives you a pretty good window into the zealousness with which Team Cheney is playing defense -- as well as the eagerness with which the cable networks manufacture moments of controversy.
Thanks to reader T.K. for the catch.
Josh
Zachary
So do we now have an official First Family for Torture? Where's Lynn? I'm sure she'd do a bang-up job.
Jesus!
May 12, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eugene made a lame response. The proper response to the Jack Bauer argument is: Under court law, any information given under duress is bad information and inadmissable. Analysis of information received under torture has almost universally proved unusable and a waste of time.
Go to the Bill O'Reilly tape:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AbHEE-ehr8
May 13, 2009 3:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
The proper response to the Jack Bauer argument is: name me one time in the history of the world when the ticking time bomb scenario has ever occurred. These people are arguing that the US Government has the right to violate national law and international treaty in order to prevent a cheap TV plot device from happening.
May 13, 2009 4:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Eugene was under fire from someone who was trying to pressure him and make it hard for him to answer. Eugene does a great job in making his points when he doesn't have someone trying to intimidate him.
If he can't make his points when there isn't an aggressive interlocutor with him, I'll be more concerned.
May 13, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Better way to answer: how is it a ticking time bomb scenario if we had enough time to waterboard him 83 times?
Also, the law does not simply look at one's actions but also at one's intent. It isn't torture when we do it to our soldiers because there is no intent to harm and they agree to the situation. It is torture when we do it to get information out of people because then we intend to do whatever it takes to break them and since waterboarding has been deemed a torturous act, it is torture.
May 13, 2009 5:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
One needs to ask Liz Cheney;
If you wanted to experience waterboarding to see what it was like, would you go to your best friend to waterboard you or would you travel to Afghanistan and allow al Qaeda to waterboard you?
May 13, 2009 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
even if it works, it is still illegal. and you can't prove it works.
May 13, 2009 8:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Waterboarding works, if by "works" you mean, it is an effective way of getting prisoners to make false confessions fed to them by their interrogators. Which is exactly what Cheney was doing.
May 13, 2009 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
This Maureen Regan wanna-be doesn't know what the hell she is talking about. Lets have more of her!
May 13, 2009 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Where did Liz Cheney go to debate school? The University of Preposterous Hobson's Choices? "If you were on a desert island with KSM and the only thing standing between world peace and total universal thermonuclear-antimatter annihilation was giving Mohammed a little shpritz of water, you mean to tell me you wouldn't do it? What if no one was looking? What if he said he actually enjoyed it? What then?"
This is the very definition of preposterous argument; the fundamental propositions prohibit meaningful debate.
Of course, the very notion that critical information about a ticking time bomb can be elicited by torturing another human being, and that that serves as ex post facto justification for it (the 24 mentality) just diverts our attention from the main point: What kind of people are we, and what kind of people do we want to be?
May 13, 2009 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, you're hot.
May 13, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Robinson got in a good question, if Obama is putting the country at danger why isn't there more people i.e. Bush and Rice out there speaking out? LC' answer, they are getting lawyered up. So what she is saying is the former president and secretary of state are more concerned about saving their hides than protecting the U.S. from great danger. That's a huge accusation against Bush and Rice etc. and needs to be followed up. Also if this program was so important to our safety, why did the Bush administration stop using it? It seems that Cheney was the only one in the WH who wanted to continue using the program. Someboy should point that out too.
May 13, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
The fact that she signed on in June of 2007 to be one of three national co-chairs of Fred Thompson's presidential campaign says everything you need to know about Liz Cheney. She wasted a UChicago Law degree to become a two-bit propagandist for Daddy during the Bush administration and she hasn't stopped.
May 13, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink