Now All These (Torture) Techniques Are Ruined! Karl Rove.

Sorry to harp on about the torture memos release, but it really does seem to be the only thing to talk about this morning.

Here O'Reilly does the expected: he defends the use of "rough stuff".

This is where the American right now find themselves in the wake of the Bush administration. They are actually publicly arguing for the right to torture, whilst still insisting that what they are talking about is not torture as such. O'Reilly here argues that what we are witnessing is a "falsehood" sold to the public by "the left wing media".

He also wonders whether Obama's anti-terror policy will be as effective as Bush's, clearly making the argument that any future attack on American soil will be Obama's fault for being too pussy to continue Bush's programme.

Karl Rove pops up to state that the only thing which might concern the US public upon reading the memos is that perhaps the US did not go far enough. And Rove again argues that the fact that medical staff were present proves that torture was not taking place.

This turns logic on it's head. The fact that what was being done to these people required the attendance of medical staff is actually the clearest signal of all that torture was taking place. The medical staff were there to ensure that the prisoners did not die, and that valuable information was not lost. They were not there to ensure that the prisoners were not being tortured. Quite the opposite. Indeed, I wonder if Rove is aware that the Nazis also had doctors present when they carried out some of their worst atrocities.

But Obama's release of these memos has done a quite startling thing. It has forced people like Rove to take to the airwaves and defend what was done. To hear Rove speak of forced nudity, diet management, sleep deprivation and waterboarding is to hear a torturer attempt to defend his own inhumanity.

Aided by O'Reilly, Rove is actually on the record defending torture. Whether or not the right wing ever accept this, the actions they are describing are regarded as torture under international law. Obama is giving them rope and they are wrapping it around their own necks on national television.

Listening to what Rove is saying here is astonishing. If they played this tape in any international court of law there would be no argument as to his guilt, as he is practically confessing to the crime, whilst insisting that the actions which he is describing are not crimes at all.

O'Reilly laments the huge discrepancy between "the far left media, the Obama administration and the Bush administration". And he's right. There is a huge discrepancy between us.

We believe in the law, they believe in anything goes.

Rove thinks that "most Americans" will agree with what they have done and that they will see "the lunacy of the left" when they object to such actions.

I honestly don't know where the average American goes when he hears of such behaviour. I only know that I personally am appalled and outraged that people like Rove and O'Reilly can unashamedly argue the case for torture on American national television.

Rove: You can only use the back of your hand and you have to splay your fingers when you slap them in the gut. On the face you have to use your fingers splayed and you have to do it between here and here... This is the kind of depth they went into.

He then laments that "all of these techniques have now been ruined."

But the American right wing are now publicly exposed as the agents of torture which some of us always argued that they were.

And, as expected, they are utterly beyond shame.

Tags: Rove, O'Reilly, torture