Fireworks as Stewart interviews Marc Thiessen

[DirkGently]

Beautiful. Former W. speechwriter Thiessen was on the Daily Show trying to defend his Cheney-esque column in the New York Post comparing DOJ laywers who defended Gitmo detainees to "mob lawyers," in apparent support of Dick and Liz' recent attack ads along the same lines, referring to these lawyers as "The Al Quaeda 7" and demanding their identities be made public.

Stewart tossed him around like a rag doll, causing him to sputter mightily.

I can only read Thiessen's sudden shrieking on this very odd theory that anyone defending Gitmo detainees should be made a pariah as a calculated expansion of Cheney's very focused campaign to avoid the historical label of "war criminal" that he has earned so thoroughly.

The root of Thiessan's (and Cheney's) argument is that "detainees" are more like prisoners of war (who can be held until the end of hostilities) than like criminals, who must be charged and tried or released. The problems with this argument spin out endlessly of course. POWs can't be tortured, for one. For another, these people are not uniformed soldiers, and thus are only suspected of being affiliated with terrorists (and many are not, as evidenced by the many eventual releases).

So the conclusion Thiessan and Cheney are suddenly stretching so hard for is that anyone the Bush administration deemed an enemy must be locked up forever with no charges and no ability to defend themselves in public.

I think the "in public" part may be the real problem here. I think what we're seeing is Cheney panicking mightily at the prospect of detainees being able to 1) prove their possible innocence and 2) reveal just how far Cheney's goons went "to the dark side" in torturing them. So back he goes to the Well of Fear, trying scare Americans, this time, into villainizing anyone who might facilitate the telling of the truth about who was locked up for Gitmo (and elsewhere) on what bases, and how they were treated.

It was telling that Thiessan tried to defend his theory by claiming that the largely volunteer, unpaid attorneys ASKED by DOJ to defend the detainees were known to also have "RADICAL VIEWS!" He then named one of the attorneys in question, saying she that she held the"RADICAL VIEW!" that detainees must be either charged or released.

That's right. The idea Cheney and Thiessen are now frantically selling is that this idea that you must either charge a prisoner with wrongdoing OR release them is incredibly dangerous. You know, that silly idea from the Constitution.

So brilliantly circular. We cannot try the detainees in court to determine whether they're terrorists or not, because that would be un-American, because we already KNOW they're terrorists, because the Bush administration locked them up on suspicion of being terrorists. And we trust the judgment of the Bush administration on this question because ...?

Stewart could have nailed him down even more firmly, I think, but the Thiessen's furious spluttering made the point well enough.

Assuming this latest theory on why we must not look behind the curtain at Gitmo fails, which it looks like it already has, it will be interesting to see what the Coalition to Keep Cheney Out of Jail comes up with next. Perhaps Liz will announce that there is a secret nuke ticking away in the heartland, which will detonate if any detainee is tried in civilian court. Good ole' Well of Fear.

Never fails.

:)

[Subdivisions]

1. Like to see it? Here it goes...

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

[progressoid]

11. I can't watch it. I'm recovering from a stomach virus.

I don't want to risk vomiting on my keyboard.

[roguevalley]

26. his argument is such crap and so is her's. If a person who defends

feels the same way as their client, then defense lawyers who defend murderers love murder, pedophilia or whatever the client has done.

[wtmusic]

2. Stewart is subtle in ways his liberal comic brethren aren't

Jon rocks. :yourock:

[DirkGently]

4. He's seriously smart

and well-informed. I think he does more "homework" than a fair number of straight journalists. And understands that homework better.

[RandomThoughts]

3. Going to have to check out that episode.

But that nuke bluff thing, been around for awhile, According to a beutiful mind, it was the thing used to drive the guy in that movie into a breakdown.

Shrug, I would call the bluff, not because it can't happen, but because anyone that would make that threat should not get their way on any policy issues. If some thing threatens to nuke you for social issues, (there is a equal retaliation arguement) then that person should not be setting social issues at any cost, because far worse then nukes would happen if someone that evil got his way.

Its always that way with a threat, if someone says they are going to do something really evil if you don't go along with them, don't go along with them, since being that evil, they might just do it anyway, or something worse if you bow down and give them your power also. Or that is how I think on things like that.

[DirkGently]

5. Ha

Cheney's thing, though, is to tell you that someone ELSE has a ticking bomb, that only he can defuse so ... look over there! It's pretty surreal seeing a former U.S. Vice President scrambling so desperately to sway public opinion. It speaks of his OWN fear, which is apparently immense. I still wonder what *specifically* he's so afraid of. Probably just that history will establish how empty his and the administration's purported justifications for subverting our entire intelligence service, the DOJ and the White House were.



:rofl:

[asjr]

6. It may very well be that the only

resource we have to get back at a slimy piece of offal such as Thiessen is the comedy route. Stewart, Olbermann, Maddow--those are the ones that can knock the ball out of the park. But where on earth are CNN, ABC, CBS, even PBS? Are lies the only way to get ratings? More and more it has become a Us against Them.

[Cosmocat]

7. Friggen scumbag ...

TRIED to "steamroll" Stewart, then balled about getting steamrolled ... It was pretty much an even split in air time, with him CONSTANTLY trying to talk over Stewart, AND he constantly just ignored when Steward nailed him ...

[DirkGently]

8. I saw that too

As you say, it was actually Thiessen trying not to let Stewart get a word in edgewise, because Thiessen's points all dissolved when answered intelligently. He was extremely rude, and then huffed and puffed and tried to shout Stewart down, and then whined that Stewart had shouted him down. Pathetic.

[blm]

9. Cheney, Rove, and Thiessen wouldn't be desperately spinning this unless Bush WANTED them to be out

there doing it. He gets to stay silent and be hailed as a 'statesman' by mainstream media while his fascist drones rewrite history while defending him mightily. Bushes will get the last laugh - their pals control most newsmedia and the future content of the country's school textbooks.

[Marr]

10. Thiessen was such a baby.

He talked about half the time, then spent five minutes complaining that he wasn't allowed to dominate the conversation.

[Papa Boule]

12. "Stewart could have nailed him down even more firmly, I think"

I've seen this kind of sentiment several times lately --- people frustrated that Stewart wasn't more aggressive with a right wing guest.

I don't think we realize how surreal this is. We forget that Stewart is a comedian. A comedian.

We want to hold him to journalistic standards. But he is not a journalist, and has never been one. He has been filling a vacuum. He is a jester saying the things no one in the royal court dares say anymore.

The surreal part is getting angry at the jester for not being more editorially aggressive, when our anger should be about a limp-noodle, decimated news industry no longer capable of doing its job.

If that industry could do its job again, jesters could simply be jesters again.

[Marr]

16. Well said. n/t

[DirkGently]

19. Oh, I'm not angry

... I just noted that Stewart could have zinged Thiessen more than he did, whether from a comedic or political perspective. When he's doing these interviews, he's "our guy," and our viewing satisfaction is directly related to how well he says the things we think need to be said.

And let's face it, what Jon Stewart is doing, despite his own protestations, goes well beyond the realm of pure comedy. He maybe a "jester," but he's a jester who undertakes serious discussion with serious people on serious issues. So it's fair to evaluate what he's doing on that basis.

Moreover, the type of "comedy" he's doing relies on making astute observations. So the more astute, the funnier.

Again, I'm not complaining -- mostly Thiessen destroyed himself. But his argument deserves a sound puncuturing, and I do reserve the right to an opinon as to whether Stewart punctured it as well as he might have.

[Uzybone]

23. +10000

That Jon Stewart is the best informed, most honest voice on TV is the real tragedy of our media.

[MadBadger]

13. I keep trying to watch the whole interview but it keeps skipping from part 2 to 3

[tallahasseedem]

14. I watched the beginning...

of the show but turned down the volume when he came on...just couldn't do it.

[DirkGently]

15. I had the same reaction

... had to turn away from time to time because Thiessen was so transparently slimy.

[Bitwit1234]

17. Thiessen ....odd that name is so close to Thyssen and guess who

this guy was..the president of the bank, where Prescott Bush was involved in, where they raised money for the Nazi's during WWII and had the bank assets frozen. Wonder if he is in the same family.

[jayfish]

18. What A Little Biatch.

I swear to a deity I would knock that guy the fuck out if I had to sit there and listen to him.

Jay

[nashville_brook]

20. you've lost any argument that you get heated over in public...

and especially on a fake news show.


i'll have to go an watch this now. it's tivo'd.

[bridgit]

21. I was watching the interview and was thinking gee this guy is so full of shit then it occured...

to me, in passing, like a thunder cloud: "Good Grief! These crazy fuckers actually believe their own fucking bullshit!! He's actually thinking that he is making sense, wow!" Then I was thinking maybe I should feel sorry for him - like a dumb animal caught in a trap - but then I figured, "Fuck Him!" Cause he ended up looking like a pissy, pudgy RW neocon dominionist chewing words right out of the Bible with un-calloused fingers on top of being a big cry baby :cry: cause no one cares what he has to say

[liberal N proud]

22. And Thiessen was pissed he didn't get his point on the air

Said Stewart did all the talking.

:wtf:

[KansDem]

24. Thiessen brought up the "Library Tower" (LA) incident as proof waterboarding works...

ABOUT THAT LIBRARY TOWER PLOT....

What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument) is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" . A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got -- an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous" -- that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year? It couldn't, of course. Conceivably the Bush administration, or at least parts of the Bush administration, didn't realize until Sheikh Mohammed confessed under torture that it had already broken up a plot to blow up the Library Tower about which it knew nothing. Stranger things have happened. But the plot was already a dead letter.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_04/017853.php

Jon should have corrected him on this...

[TCJ70]

25. I had to search for the extended interview and...

...oh my god. That guy is a ridiculous tool.

[Electric Monk]

27. Nice post, and welcome to DU from another huge Douglas Adams fan.

:toast:

[DirkGently]

28. Thanks EM!

Better go track down that inter-dimensional horse.

:toast: