Friday, March 11, 2005

Sean Hannity, tiddly winking away human rights for fun and profit

Hannity & Colmes (Fox News)

Avi Cover was a guest on Hannity & Colmes to discuss the lawsuit the ACLU and Human Rights First filed against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of eight former detainees who claim they were severely tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The suit alleges that Secretary Rumsfeld both authorized the torture and then failed to stop the torture.
HANNITY: I want three specific pieces of evidence, and don't spin me, because I don't have any patience for this. Three specific pieces of evidence that Donald Rumsfeld authorized personally the torture. Give my the evidence, don't spin.
AVI COVER, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: Very good, December 2002, Donald Rumsfeld authorized interrogation techniques in place for Guantanamo Bay. Those techniques include food deprivation, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, environmental manipulation, hooding, the use of dogs to instill fear in people. You put those things in combination together, they are torture. And actually, what's very interesting, the State Department just issued human rights reports on Libya, on Tunisia, Saudi Arabia. That's what they called torture. They called sleep deprivation torture.
HANNITY: You know what? I disagree with you.


And that was the last intelligent thing Hannity had to say during the interview.
HANNITY: You're going to say, "Please, Mr. Terrorist, tell me where my sister is?"
HANNITY: No, no, no. No, no, no. This is -- you need to answer this. "Please, Mr. Terrorist, tell me where my brother is?"
HANNITY: You know what? You're playing Tiddly Winks with terrorist
HANNITY: "Please, Mr. Terrorist, oh please tell me where my sister is." -- Not going to work.
HANNITY: "Please, Mr. Terrorist, tell me where my children are. Please, sir. Please, sir. Be nice to me."
And time, if not logic, is always on Hannity's side:
COVER: Are you concerned we have eight innocent individuals...
HANNITY: Live in the real world. Evil exists...
COVER: This treatment was perpetrated on innocent individuals. How do you reconcile with that?
HANNITY: We've got to run.
What a stupid bastard. What a stupid, evil bastard. What a stupid, evil, overpaid bastard.

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