Shepherd Smith, the F-Bomb and Torture
Trace Gallagher, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Shepherd Smith were in attendance, doing a segment of The Strategy Room. Judge Napolitano was making the case that he has been making the past several days that the Bush administration lawyers were not offering an honest legal opinion, but were telling the Bush administration what it wanted to hear. Suddenly, the normally cool, calm, and collected Shepherd Smith exploded into red faced, desk pounding, foul mouthed fury.
"We are America! I don't give a rat's a-- if it helps. We are America! We do not f------- torture."
Beware, the attached clip does not bleep out the colorful language.
Two observations can be made. First, time was that dropping an F bomb on the air would be a career ender for any newscaster. Can one imagine Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley uttering the word on the air in connection, say, with something Lyndon Johnson had done? Apparently Fox News is going to give Shepherd Smith a pass. It is a testament to the ratings that Shepherd Smith gets and to his undoubted skills as a newscaster that this is being done.
Second, Shepherd Smith's sentiment is simple, heartfelt, impassioned, and a cold comfort to anyone who might be killed in a 9/11 style attack should we grow too finicky, as we have apparently become, to do what is necessary to extract intelligence from captured terrorists. One can hope that Shepherd Smith's conception of what America is or is not could stand up to telling the bereaved of the next terrorist attack that, "We might have been able to stop this if we had gotten rough on some Al Qaeda bad guys, but we are America, after all, and we don't do that. Your spouse/lover/child/close relative/best friend died for those eternal American values that say that we do not-er---effing torture."
It would be understandable if that bereaved person, contemplating a loved one that he or she will never again see upon this Earth, might have some colorful metaphors of his or her own to utter.
One also wonders how one defines the explosive word "torture." The UN Convention against Torture defines it thus:
"...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
The term "severe pain" is rather self explanatory and was not, by all accounts, done to the Al Qaeda terrorists. No racks or thumb screws here. The key phrase appears to be "suffering, whether physical or mental." Does water boarding, cold rooms, self deprivation, diet manipulation, or any other practice that the interrogation memos describes fit the definition?
An overly broad definition would suggest that anything that causes discomfort, such an interrogator raises his or her voice, might become torture. This is obviously silly on its face.
Where does one draw the line? The lives of thousands may well hang in the balance depending on the answer,
Source: Fox gives Shep pass on F-bomb, for now, Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover, Washington Times, April 23rd, 2009
Shepherd Smith drops F-bomb during Freedom Watch: We do not F%$&ing torture!!!, YouTube.com
CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Human Rights Web
Published by Mark Whittington
Mark R. Whittington is a writer residing in Houston, Texas. He is the author of The Last Moonwalker, Children of Apollo, Dark Sanction, and Nocturne. He has written numerous articles, some for the Washington... View profile
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10 Comments
Post a CommentWay to go Shep. We are Americans and we do NOT BLEEPING TORTURE. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Cheney.
(comment was truncated; my bad)
Mr Whittington, why don't you apologize to the families of our soldiers and marines who died at the hands of insurgents who were inspired to join the fight out of fury at the torture that you think is somehow saving lives? Look at the world, read some history, use your brain, and stop confusing Agent Jack Bauer with reality.
"...to do what is necessary to extract intelligence from captured terrorists." ??
What is necessary is approach the suspect (and they are suspects, not convicted terrorists -- their very status in the eyes of the torturer as "terrorists" may have been established in the first place by "intelligence" garnered by, guess what, the torture of other suspects) with intelligence and dispassion, not feckless brutality. Life is not an episode of 24; the infantile naivete of so-called conservatives these days can make one weep. Torture can make people speak, but it can't make them speak the truth. Torture has always "worked" - it works to extort confessions, especially false ones, it works to propagate terror, it works to turn whole societies into lying, timorous agents for the State, it works to punish, and it works to perpetuate and intensify the very threat that some, like the astoundingly ignorant Mr. Whittington, use, speciously, to justify the torture itself. Mr Whittington, why don't you
I am a former interrogator and I am FED UP with idiots and armchair quarterbacks like this article's author, Mark Whittington, who lists foreign policy, politics and science fiction among his "interests," has never served in the Armed Forces, knows NOTHING about interrogation, much less torture, and is permitted to put out ridiculous and completely baseless assertions like "An overly broad definition would suggest that anything that causes discomfort, such an interrogator raises his or her voice, might become torture. This is obviously silly on its face."
First of all, Mark, only a moron and an inexperienced buffoon would question whether or not waterboarding constituted severe pain, because only a moron like would DARE to write something about which he KNOWS NOTHING.
Have you ever waterboarded someone, Mark? Have you ever been in the room when someone was waterboarded? Have you ever even bothered to watch a video of someone being waterboarded? Have you thought about it even
Wow, this author is actually paid to give his opinion? That's just depressing.
It's dishonest that this article passes itself off as a hard news story when it's an opinion piece.
@patty: Perhaps more importantly, what do we tell the soldiers and their families that they are fighting for, if we are willing to cast away our values and human rights?
Torture certainly works. Every witch admitted guilt and turned over friends and family to the torturers of the witch hunt. How would you feel if your loved one was turned into a frog by a witch? Torture is good.
This video was on a Fox WEBCAST -- not over the air... not the same as over the air..
What do you propose we tell the spouse/parent/child significant other of a service person that is taken prisoner and tortured? That is ok for us to torture, but not ok for us to BE tortured. That would be very hypocritical. We are the USA and were (should still BE) above torture.