What is it with these chickenhawks and their love of torture? Do they think the real world is an episode of 24? After Bill-O repeats his Obama already had three terrorist attacks on his watch bull pucky he gives Karl Rove free reign to explain to the American public why he thinks torture should be used to "squeeze" the Christmas underwear bomber.
Karl, if anyone ever deserved to be "squeezed" to fess up to all of their criminal activity, it's you, but I do not advocate for anyone to be tortured to get a confession out of them no matter who they are. Using the excuse that this person is a terrorist to advocate for torture is just disgusting. It yields nothing but someone telling you what they want to hear to make it stop, and it destroys the foundation this country was built on and our judicial system which sadly has not worked for Rove in the manner it has managed to work for most common criminals since Rove along with most of the Bush administration has been given a pass by our justice system.
If we truly had any real justice in this country Rove would be sitting in a jail cell instead of on Fox News and telling us how we should be torturing suspected terrorists and trashing our rule of law.
O'REILLY: All right, now why do you think President Obama made that a part of his presentation yesterday? I mean, he came out and he obviously - - the Obama administration is feeling the heat. Third attack, third terrorist attack in, you know, six months. So they're feeling the heat. But why would he go into that territory? We got to be together, we can't have partisanship. Why would he go there?
ROVE: Well, look, I think, in fact I tracked this on my website at rove.com. He has these straw man arguments, like during the debate on the stimulus package. He said, you know, our opponents have offered up nothing. Well, they had offered up something. You know, when we had a battle under the health care Bill, he said the opponents of health care reform don't want health care reform. No, they want a reform. They want to reform a different way.
Well, a corollary of that sort of straw man mindset is to sort of question the motives of your opponents by suggesting that they're being unpatriotic. And you know, that the real thing is to come together in a moment of unity.
And look, I understand that there are moments when that's required. But in a disagreement over the handling of this Christmas bomber was, you know, is a legitimate matter.
O'REILLY: No doubt it's legitimate. Yeah, I don't think, look, no clear minded or fair minded person could say these aren't legitimate points of debate. Closing Guantanamo, civilian trials, they absolutely are.
But President Obama now finds himself in a very, very tough position. I said earlier, and I don't know whether you saw it, but earlier this week, one more terrorist attack, one more.
ROVE: Right.
O'REILLY: .but it has to be one of magnitude. You'd have to have dead American bodies on display. One more, he's done, I think, in my opinion, because it just -- he staked territory so far away from Bush- Cheney. And the Bush-Cheney policies did protect us. They did work. But he staked territory so far away from that, that people aren't going to forget that. And the perception is going to be he can't keep us safe. Am I wrong?
ROVE: Yeah, Well, I think he wants controversy over this issue. We should be unified. In order to distract attention from what we really ought to be concerned about, which is thank God he finally said it's a war. But when is he going to continue to act? When is he going to start acting as if it's a war?
I think he ought to seriously consider in the next several weeks, withdrawing the designation of the Christmas Day bomber as a criminal defendant and put him as an enemy combatant.
O'REILLY: He's not going to do that.
ROVE: ...and put him back in the system to be squeezed.
You know what, though? I have it on pretty good authority that it was discussed that at the meeting that was held earlier this week to discuss the administration's reaction to all this, that Holder, in the meeting, could not adequately explain and defend why he was immediately treated as a criminal defendant rather than turned over to the CIA.
O'REILLY: Well, Holder couldn't defend it in front of, he couldn't defend Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He, you know.
ROVE: Well.
O'REILLY: Senator.
ROVE: But look, but the press.
O'REILLY: The senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham made Holder look like a child in that hearing.
ROVE: Right, yeah. But the president joined Holder in defending the KSM decision. My understanding is in that meeting that the president was one of the people saying I don't understand why you did what you did. So.
O'REILLY: Do you think is that a good authority there? Is that -- you believe that?
ROVE: I believe that, yes.
O'REILLY: All right.
ROVE: I'd like to, you know, unfortunately based on one source, not multiple sources and second hand. But I do think there was this administration is rethinking. And I hope they do rethink their approaches to the war on terror.
O'REILLY: So do I. All right, Mr. Rove, thanks very much as always.
