In debating the use of torture on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski expressed a concern that “fear and reality will overtake morality.” However, host Joe Scarborough did not see that as a problem and seemed to believe it was completely appropriate for what he called “rational fear” to far outweigh morality.
“They’re not going to get any intelligence,” Scarborough said of President Obama’s recent declaration that the United States no longer uses torture. “You have FBI agents that have come out — and it’s laughable — them criticizing the CIA. … The CIA has to rely on what the CIA and people have relied on for years, what American interrogators in every war have relied on.”
Despite Scarborough’s scoffing, recent accounts by military and FBI interrogators make it clear that torture is an ineffective method of interrogation which almost never produces actionable intelligence, and there is no evidence that it has prevented any terrorist plots. In addition, the CIA had no formal interrogation capacity prior to 9/11 and created its torture program in 2002 only at the insistence of the Bush administration and without being fully aware of its limitations.
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However, both Scarborough and Brzezinski appear to share the fundamental misapprehension that torture works. “Robert Gibbs was saying on Meet the Press yesterday … they don’t know whether other means may be able to get the same information …” Brzezinski began timidly.
Scarborough interrupted her with a laugh, saying,”If you want to take that chance…”
“It’s an argument of fear,” Brzezinski retorted.
“Sometimes you have a reason to be fearful,” Scarborough replied. “There’s irrational fear and then there’s rational fear. If you lived in a neighborhood where people’s homes get broken into and people get shot and killed at night and their items get stolen and you’re fearful that may happen to you — that’s not irrational. … And you will support a stronger police presence in your home.”
“If this country got attacked the way it did on September 11, 2001,” he went on, “it is not irrational for Americans to fear that it might happen again. … You have al Qaeda out there wanting to do nothing but kill all of us.”
Scarborough pointed to the latest Pew Poll for confirmation, noting that it shows a narrow plurality of 49% of Americans saying that torture of suspected terrorists is justified either sometimes or often, with only 25% saying it is never justified. “This is another trouble with the Democrats,” Scarborough insisted, “because they live in a bubble. … They don’t understand that doing this comes at a high political cost.”
“We can have the debate on morality,” Scarborough concluded. “But by every objectionable standard — objective standard — the intelligence community has succeeded in cracking the code on al Qaeda. … And if it upsets you that a terrorist is forced to sit down and put his hands in the air for a while — okay, we’ll have that debate.”
This video is from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Apr. 27, 2009.
