Christopher Hitchens Debates Bill O'Reilly Over Torture (VIDEO)

Christopher Hitchens was a guest on the O'Reilly Factor tonight to debate O'Reilly on the necessity and effectiveness of torture. To preface the debate, O'Reilly showed a clip of the season premiere of the Fox show "24" in which the show's protagonist, who has tortured people in his capacity as a CIA officer, defiantly testifies before Congress that his actions saved lives and he doesn't regret them at all. Hitchens, who opposes torture and who underwent waterboarding to determine if it in fact was torture (he concluded it was) argued against O'Reilly's assertion that torture can be justified by the ticking time-bomb scenario, saying that scenario is never a reality and "you can't make a practice out of a general case."

Ultimately, the debate proved too short for Hitchens who remarked, "We barely got our trousers off, we should pursue this."

[WATCH]

Comments

[Fromageball]

If there is any one reason(human rights issues aside) to oppose torture it is that it does not work. Besides, you have to wonder about the people who order and the people who actually do the torturing. How are they any better than the people they are torturing?

[RobinSeattle]

Yeah, O'Reilly made it short enough that the always rhetorically armed for bear Hitchens didn't have enough time to properly eviscerate Billo and his nonsense on this issue. It was a bit like calling a baseball game in the first inning with the count 1-0 on Derek Jeter to prevent the other side from incurring any damage. It is the ever present Tyranny of the Clock you see on television and it served the tyrannical outlook of Fox and O'Reilly in this instance.

It is also the height of callousness that Fox would turn a discussion of a vital foreign policy issue into a chance to flog its flagship tv program.

[jcapflorida]

O'Reilly actually used a clip from "24" to make his case? That's the best he could do? IT'S A TV SHOW, BILL! As I always say "I'm against torture, unless Jack Bauer is doing the torturing." Goes to show O'Reilly's mind has never actually been based in reality. Tool.

[lesterbud]

Brilliant!

We should put that right into the Army Field Manual:

7.2.3.1 No torture of any prisoner will be allowed unless conducted directly by the fictional character Jack Bauer from the hit TV series "24".

[jcapflorida]

Hey, unlike O'Reilly, at least I can separate reality and fiction. ;)

[Dan Stewart]

Not surprisingly, O’Reilly lied.

George Tenet has never said that waterboarding Sheikh Khalid Mohammad led to information about the existence or whereabouts of a ticking bomb, saving tens of thousands of lives.

Hitchens was disappointly passive, not his usual feisty self, and didn't confront O'Reilly on his misstatment.

[GLT21]

Maybe if we water board billo the clown we can get him to admit his gayness.

[stupidllama]

hey ease up on the gay communitity they have had a rough year, no reason to pile on.

[lesterbud]

Bill would last about 30 seconds before wetting himself and copping to killing JFK.

[Dannydel]

Hitchens is now engaging in a battle of wits with unarmed dirtbags?

[USAFree1]

Come on now. O'Reilly uses a fictional TV series to make his point? That's one of the most lame brained things I've ever seen. Good grief!

[cmhmd]

Yes, and if Antonin Scalia hadn't done the same thing one could attribute it to just O'Reilly being an idiot.

Unfortunately this is how authoritarians think.

Cheers,

[vesaversa1]

These two idiots deserve each other

[bronceye]

The interview had to be cut short because oh'really was being double-ended. Hitchens was talking over oh'really's head and billie was talking out of his arse.

[Phxflyer]

This is the choice we have on Fox -- a nutcase and a drunk?

[minty68]

The drunk and the skunk battling it out...

[zest]

Watching Fox is torture; so I don't.

[CaptainSensible]

Hey, let's make a show where we torture people and get bad info and the ticking time-bomb blows up and kills the star of the show! And then even more people are mad at us about the whole torture business and blow up more stuff and we keep torturing people to find out how to defuse the bombs and THEY keep blowing up! Then we go on Bill O'Reilly and play a clip from that show after his clip from "24" and he's convinced that OMG torture is bad mmkay!

Kulchur warz makes my brain have a tummyache.

[disjectamembra]

bill o' needs to be reminded it does not make you tough or a hero to talk tough behind a camera. in front of a camera mr. o'reilly plays the part of a tough hard conservative wrestler. he is a blowhard. but the rhetoric he uses sounds smart enough to convince his hypnotized and sedated audience. but he is wrong and i liked the way hitchens suggested they continue to take their pants off.

[saami]

What was lost on Billo is the scenario that Mr. Hitchens tried to explain of England under attack during WWII but still doing the right thing and not torturing....the Nazi's and Japanese did the torturing and the world did not and does not think highly of them for it. It doesn't work, plain and simple. Hell, I would confess to anything to make you stop water boarding me.

[IncredulousGeezer]

What with the latest rumors that Billo is gay, I'd watch myself, Christopher, with the trouser dropping references, full of single malt, or not. LOL

[lesterbud]

They had to cut away when Christopher started laughing at Bills "innie".