Colbert: US Constitution doesn’t say ‘don’t torture’

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Thursday, Aug 14, 2008

Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert set out on Tuesday to mockingly challenge author Jane Mayer’s assertion that “America is synonymous with torture.” Mayer is the author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.

“Walking on the dark side,” Colbert began. “Vice President Cheney warned us we’d have to do it. … Did you selectively forget that?”

“I named the book after his quote,” Mayer replied. “He said it was going to be a war we fought in the shadows, and I thought it’d be nice to shine a little light and see what that war consisted of. … It’s the story of how we became a torture state.”

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“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says, ‘Don’t torture,’” Colbert pointed out. “It says ‘cruel and unusual. What we’re doing may be cruel but it is no longer unusual for us to do it.”

“One of the things I write about here is how many clever lawyers it took to come up with analysis like that,” responded Mayer. “Waterboarding … used to be a crime, a major crime, but now it’s not any more. Same with things like extraordinary rendition, where you could pick somebody up … put them in a dungeon and throw away the key.”

Colbert quickly noted that those dungeons are all “in another country. … What I don’t know about, ‘no harm, no foul.’ Except for the harmful fouls.”

Mayer continued to emphasize the distortions of language involved in the torture program, noting that “enhanced interrogation is a euphemism for hurting people on purpose.”

“You’re making it sound bad,” Colbert objected. “‘Enhanced,’ that’s a positive term, like ‘male enhancement.’ We spend lots of money. I get emails all the time.”

Colbert then turned to Mayer’s central argument that the war on terror has damaged American ideals, saying, “Even if we torture — Donald Rumsfeld said it best, about Abu Ghraib — the problem here is people found out that we were doing it.”

“Ideals are eternal until you do something publicly,” Colbert explained. “If we had never known that the government is doing this, the way the government didn’t want us to know, the ideals would still be intact. But people like you want to harm our ideals by letting us know what it is we’re doing on the dark side. Aren’t you part of the problem?”

“It could be a real problem for some of the top people in the administration,” Mayer acknowledged.

Colbert concluded by saying optimistically, “In 1971, the CIA led a coup that led to the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile…. Now they’re kind of just three-quarters drowning people to get information. I’d say, isn’t that progression?”

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, broadcast August 12, 2008.

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5 Responses to “Colbert: US Constitution doesn’t say ‘don’t torture’”

1. jim mckeever Says:
   August 14th, 2008 at 8:52 am

   personally i like colbert, but the fifth admendment to the us constitution is clear: no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. torture is not nor has it ever been allowed in this country or by our gov. however i learned in my service in the us army, this is not the case

2. Jen Says:
   August 14th, 2008 at 10:54 am

   Colbert is a genius of proving his argument by “arguing” for the “other side”.

   I find it hilarious people aren’t even keen enough to GET his big joke, his fake persona, and ILlogic. He’s hilarious and makes the left media look like fools who can’t see BOTH SIDES of an argument.

   His interview with this woman was wonderful, with Colbert as usual playing devil’s advocate so well it fools people.

   That man understands the warped logic of the neo cons better than any of his peers.

3. Elifino Says:
   August 14th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

   Jen:
   The neocons use contrived warped logic against us, but don’t you for a minute think their logic is warped – it is very precise, calculated, directed and being high speed steamrolled over us from all fronts.

4. Beam Says:
   August 14th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   allaboutGod.com

5. Royalty? Says:
   January 12th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

   Will anyone hold Obama’s feet to the fire if he does nothing to stop torture like he promised? Kind of like the DFL got elected to stop the war and did nothing. Kind of like the DFL is suppose to protect Social Security but Obama’s first move is not to tax the rich like he said to get elected but to try and cut old people’s Social Security (not even the Republican’s did that) while he throws another eight hundred billion on the International Banker’s plate. The elite’s will use a minority/women to do their worst deeds so their phony liberals can call you racist/sexist if you object. Any time the elite bankers back a non-traditional race candiadate or a woman it’s to get them to do the dirt they feel the public would not accept from a white male candidate. I voted for a real Black leader for President who has a proven record of service to the black/and all other races community-Cynthia Mckinney.