The parade of torture sympathizers from the Bush Administration continued last night on The Daily Show with former Bush speech writer Marc Thiessen making an appearance. Thiessen has been vocal in his support of the the interrogation policies that were implemented during the Bush Administration and has most recently jumped to the defense of Liz Cheney and her organization
for questioning the loyalty of some DOJ lawyers.
Here was Thiessen in the Washington Post on Monday:
One lawyer in the National Security Division of Holder's Justice Department, Jennifer Daskal, has written that any terrorist not charged with a crime "should be released from Guantanamo's system of indefinite detention" even though "at least some of these men may ... join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day." Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy? My hunch is that most Americans would say no.
Do other lawyers in question hold similarly radical and dangerous views? Without the information Holder is withholding, we cannot know if such lawyers are affecting detainee policy.
Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the "shameful" personal attacks on "these fine lawyers," while numerous commentators leveled charges of "McCarthyism."
I was wondering how Jon Stewart would treat Thiessen after John Yoo seemed to get a big pass in his recent appearance on the Daily Show, but Stewart did a pretty good job. Here is the full discussion in three parts:
I still think Stewart doesn't give himself enough credit by telling Thiessen that their views are "not that far apart". Clearly this is not the case. It was nice to see Thiessen's views challenged and Stewart take him to task for his support of the shameful ad that was put out by Liz Cheney's organization.
Thiessen is another individual who defends the use of torture, is unapologetic about the affects of using such techniques on detainees, and is critical of those who refuse to use these same policies. It is these views that show a disrespect and some could argue, a certain level of contempt for the American justice system. These individuals want the power to be able to torture detainees and will continue to level attacks against anyone who defends the rule of law and appropriate interrogation tactics. Interviews like the one above only continue to re-enforce this point.
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