preferred way to sort of communicate outside of the washington media. and it s risky for them because some of them are dreadfully bad at it? the missions or the comedians? one of the first rules you can always see happen is that s an excellent question. they always say that at least once or twice. by the way, yours was. thank you. you know, a long time ago before vice president biden was vice president biden, i ran into him in florida. first of all, he s a close talker, which i enjoy about him. his breath was delightful. he said to me, you re a comedian and blah, blah, blah. i am more nervous about going on john stewart than about going on meet the press. i thought that was telling. they re scared of comedians because comedians, first of all, we don t have any filter. 0 our edit buttons are on hold and we go there. we have nothing to lose so they re scared of us and should be. you re absolutely right about
said she has no first language. like george bush. what about this idea the difference between letterman and leno that the two sort sort of, big names in late-night for the last generation, really, that leno was the nice one who created that safe space and the appeal, and obviously won the ratings battle. he was basically always beating letterman in that. but letterman was sort of the sharper, edgier one, you weren t quite sure what you were going to get. definitely! which show was better? yeah. well, i don t know. i prefer the lettermaneese sort of attitude. i ve known jay for years and like him very much. but of the two, i would prefer the variety of opinion, and letterman is so damn smart and witty, genuinely witty. not just comedy, but wit, which is rare. wonderful that way. stephen colbert has done one of the most astounding feats in the
we need intelligence in this world. having said all that, i sat and reread the entire report last week, the entire executive summary, the world s longest executive summary, 481 pages. it s shocking and, frankly, i was stunned to hear that quote from vice president cheney just now. if he doesn t think that was torture, i would invite had him anywhere in the united states to sit in a water board and go through what they went through, one of them 100-plus-odd times. that s ridiculous to make that claim. this was torture by anybody s testify nigs. john mccain said it s torture and i think he s in a better position to know that than vice president cheney. i was shocked at that statement he just made, and to say it was carefully managed and carefully everybody knew what was going on, that s absolute nonsense. if you go through the report, it s clear that the people doing this weren t being honest, even with their superiors at the white house, at the upper
not use poison gas. this is an asim mymmetrical conflict, the terror war and the use of torture is partly a result of that asymmetry. there aren t a whole lot of americans in captivity being tortured by al qaeda. so i think that changes that s one of the reasons you get the plurality, not exactly pro-torture plurality but torture as seen as essentially just another weapon of war. so, elise, this report comes out some time well, part of the report comes out in the next few weeks, the next few months. what do you think happens then? where should this debate go then? i think it s a debate the country needs to have. i also think that we need to look at this report and i do think that it was somewhat politicized for all the information they analyzed i don t understand why the key participants weren t interviewed. the cia? yes, yes. and who have stated their willing ne
suspect suspected terrorists who may know details about future terrorist attacks against the u.s., always justified, sometimes justified, i guess one of the questions i have senator kick was talking with about the atmosphere in the wake of 9/11 and that led to some of these excesses but now we re more than a decade removed from that. we have reports like this coming out. adam, i wonder if that will move these numbers or if this is the fixed attitude of the public. i wouldn t be surprised if the numbers didn t move at all. in just about 11 years, there s never been a claim with about the effectiveness of this program that has really stood up to scrutiny. despite the reputation of pop can culture for being liberal, that s almost a pro torture bias. you have guys like jack bauer. just an assumption that torture