Shepard Smith Uncensored: "We Are America, We Do Not F**king Torture!" (VIDEO)

Update: scroll down for Smith's uncensored comments

Fox News viewers witnessed a rather incredible scene on Wednesday as anchor Shepard Smith and Fox contributor Judith Miller (of CIA leak infamy) repeatedly and passionately condemned torture, with Smith declaring at one point, "We are America, we don't torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train! This government is of, by, and for the people -- that means it's mine. That means -- I'm not saying what is torture, and what is not torture, but I'm saying, whatever it is, you don't do it for me! I want off the train when the government starts -- I want off, next stop, now!"

The full segment is worth a watch. And Smith felt strongly enough about the issue to speak out about it again as he was heading into commercial break.

"They better not do it," he said. "If we are going to be Ronald Reagan's Shining City on the Hill, we don't get to torture. We don't do it." Fade to black.

(Big thanks to HuffPost Media Monitor Rosemary from Massachusetts for the tip -- keep 'em coming.)

Watch the segment (Smith's comments above begin at about 3:45):

UPDATE:

On FoxNews.com's online show The Strategy Room, Smith took his opposition to a whole other level. "We are America!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!"

Watch:

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Comments

[leonel]

PRAGMATIC ANSWER TO TORTURE DILEMMA.

People wonder why pragmatism is the "new" method to political dilemmas and even the best description of the best elected officials. It is superior to conservative or liberal views that have a preset way of looking at things and tend to divide people. Pragmatism is based on facts, evidence and expert opinions. So what is the pragmatic resolution? Ask experts how it is truly and correctly actually handled in practice. A former spy wrote a book and was on C-Span, sorry I forgot name. He explained that we should not have the approach used by the Bush Administration of trying to develop legalistic language to get around prohibition against torture. They are definitely wrong. What happens in actual practice is that the anti-torture laws have to be respected, but that if there was an extreme case where abuse of a prisoner was make because the police or military had convinced of themselves that it would lead to resolving an emergency, such as preventing a highly dangerous pending case of terrorism, that they would have to accept responsibility for having violated the law and they would be using it as mitigation to being punished themselves. In the present case, the persons who did the physical abuse are being excused because they were under orders. The lawyers and officials that believed that the law could be officially avoided should be punished, they have no legal excuse. The pragmatic world is the real difficult world.

[TheSkeptic99]

Why torture is wrong.
A: Torture produces unreliable information. The subject is more interested in providing answers that he thinks his tormentors want to hear, rather than answering truthfully. Conversely the tormentors tend to accept those answers that match what they desire to hear.
B: Information, when accurate, is usually too old to be of value.
C: There are better means of extracting information from captives.
D: Torturers become asocial individuals who can not integrate back into normal society, and often are a danger to society.
E: Torture is inherently un-American in concept and in practice.

[jbyrd]

America does not torture...come now, how naive are we. Every war the United States has ever been in torture has been used against our enemies. If you don't believe that then you must still believe in the Easter bunny too.

[TheSkeptic99]

Until the Bush administration, the policy has been against torture. Individuals have broken the policy in the past, but that did not make it right then or now. Bush is the first President to officially make torture part of national policy.

[Tyrione]

Shep is the only guy worth watching on FOX.

[TardisJockey]

Does anyone remember Chinese Water Torture? Prisoners were tied to a board and water was released in single drops over their foreheads. There was no attempt to drown or to simulate drowning. There was no physical threat or harm toward the prisoner. And when it was done, there was never any sign of abuse. Who could possibly have an issue with it? Would you call single drops of water splashing on your head for a couple of hours torture?

Well, yeah. That's why it's called Water TORTURE. Because the incessant drip-drip-drip soon started to feel like a beating and it would reverberate through the prisoner's head. This torture was known to drive men clinically insane.

It doesn't matter what you call it , or how many doctors you have standing by. If it wasn't torture, you wouldn't need doctors.

[Read Books]

The "torture" vs. "enhanced interrogation" debate is a huge gray area. I agree with Shep that to be a "shining city on a hill" we absolutely cannot torture. We can't tear out fingernails or poke eyes.

A friend put me on the spot yesterday, asking what I thought about the torture debate. I found I could only give him a confident answer if it was grounded in context. Here is what I said. Suppose my children were about to be killed and we captured a bad guy. Not a suspected bad guy, rather, we KNOW he has critical info and the clock is ticking. In that case, I would waterboard the baddie to save my childrens' lives. Logically, one should not bar waterboarding to save some else's kids either.

In the spirit of providing context for moral issues, the STRATFOR article below sets the stage for the terrible choices the Government faced after 9/11. Was a bad guy going to vaporize a major city with a nuclear bomb?

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090420_torture_and_u_s_intelligence_failure

[Cheryl44]

Silly--we didn't torture these guys to find anything out. We tortured them to make them say out loud that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working together. Not that they were, but the Bush Administration needed "proof."

[Read Books]

Are you speculating or stating a fact? If torture made a prisoner concoct an Osama-Saddam plot, please cite your authoritative source.

[zapper501]

ofcourse you know that for a fact.

[ebanks84]

I LOVE SHEPARD SMITH. And I love his feistyness. You tell him Shep.

[zapper501]

omg give me a break judy miller the no.1 proponent for the war with the nytimes, now wants to be shocked that war is a horrible situation. makes me want to puke

[wymck]

As history marches along, some themes emerge. Slow, soft and weak nations are trampled and replaced by quicker, bolder, hardier nations.

Shepard Smith is excited about torture when he boldly proclaims that we Americans don't stoop to it... with a pleading, unbelievable delivery which seems to announce guilt rather than deny it.

To be sure, the USA is governed by the Constitution and not the Geneva Conventions, and our Constitution officially has greater weight than the US Presidency or any agreement the President made; however in practice this is not so.

So, Americans, you live under a President who is willing to sacrifice a whole lot of you in order to explain to the planet that America is a place of strong ideals... ideals which used to include hard work, fair play, In God We Trust, and the President's men paying their taxes.

The ideals of America used to include morals and virtues, ethics and standards. America used to be a country that would support its friends, oppose its enemies, and pay any price in the defense of liberty. America used to be well-known as a Christian nation.

But, watch out. It seems Obamarica won't support its friends or oppose its enemies. Our President rushes to foreign lands and chats up dictators like playground schoolgirls.

So, nations of Earth, relax, the United States of America does not torture... you heard it on FoxNews, and in Obamarica that's the highest authority in the land. That you can believe, that is.

[ebanks84]

I don't know the America of which you speak. I remember the America of compassion who always wanted to help, not destroy people. I don't know this Bush America of so-called REAL people that Palin knows, and I DON'T WANT TO KNOW THEM.

[imsosure]

If that's the case Shep, the soldiers who were convicted and jailed were made to believe they were simply following orders, then Obama ought to release and reinstate these solders without prejudice asap.

[LeeCalif]

............and after the camera shuts off, Smith folds up his script, puts it in his pocket and leaves the set.

[flossophy]

yup... the progress0bots take the bait quite easily...

[imsosure]

Taking bait and following orders, what's the difference. Shep has constitutional protection and the soldiers have to be scape goats for the short comings of a poorly managed and unsupervised soldiers who thought they were doing as instructed yet they're in prison. The ones who belong in prison are the ones who failed to insure the soldiers were fully aware of limitations and not allowed to improvise but that's not what happened, is it?

[TRichards]

Will one of the networks PLEASE rescue Shepard Smith from Fox News? As a newsman with intellectual integrity, working for Fox must be torture -- which more than explains his passion against it.

How sad that another poster saw his opposition to torture as a leftist position!!! Just how ignorant does one need to be not to recognize that it's an American position, not a leftist position? I think I can say with very little fear of contradiction, that damn few of our soldiers over our history sacrificed their lives so that the U.S.A. could have the new freedom (granted by the Bush Administration): the freedom to torture!

The most unAmerican thing I can think of is to embrace torture (or to pretend that renaming it in an Orwellian fashion changes torture's nature).

[websnarf]

You would prefer Shepard Smith be a lost quieted voice on some "mainstream" network? He has conservative credo while at the same time some sense of actual morality. He is forcing FOX news to face the fact that being a conservative or republican doesn't allow you to condone horrible behaviour like torture. (Judith Miller, oddly enough, is doing the same thing.) He doesn't fall for the phoney defences, and you can't peg him with a "liberal bias".

Better that he is on FOX making his neo-con, Bush-era-apologist guests and co-commentators face the facts than for him to disappear into some other mainstream channel, where FOX would have labelled him a liberal in a second (because they don't even recognize the concept of fact checking.)

[daddyG56]

You make a very good point. On any other network, Shep would just be another reasonable person, but on Fox, he really stands out.

Nice to see Judith Miller acting in a reasonable manner for a change, although I really hate to see her be anywhere besides jail. She's the one who took the White House bait and helped Rove lead this country to Bush's war in Iraq, remember?

[ebanks84]

He has more going for him than Scar borough has, that's for sure. Maybe MSNBC can do a switch. Joe just might like that.

[erinker]

Maybe it was "faux outrage" for Shep, but it certainly isn't for me! I was having this very same conversation with my boyfriend right before I heard Shep's tirade, and I was saying the EXACT SAME THING. So whether his ire was fake or not, he certainly gave voice to MY ire, and for that I thank him!

[canadiansoccermom]

I don't think it is fake. I think it irks his sensibilities and therefore can not stay quiet about it.

[ebanks84]

He's right. And I don't care who at FOX don't like it.

[berrycooda]

I watched S. Smith's show a couple of times and the more I watched it the
more it felt like TORTURE.... If he was any more left he would fall off his chair.

The old saying goes....you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar....

So I say.....give the prisoners honey with the bees attached.
Maybe this will satisfy the ACLU and Shepard Smith...

Taser is torture....police beatings is torture...school bullies are torture.
parents abusing children - sexually - physically - mentally - is also torture isn't it.

And it goes on and on and on....thanks to the ACLU and the bleeding hearts for
sticking up for the criminals.

Put all the prisoners at Gitmo in a limo and sent them to Shepard Smith's house
for some TLC...

[Patriot til Death]

How can Shep be a lefty working for a right-wing extremist propaganda machine posing as a network? Hmmmmm....maybe they're just trying to be fair and balanced.

I welcome opposing views that want to debate facts and express opinions. I disagree with Shep but glad to see him with Fox.

Now that liberal Kirsten Powers babe, I could debate her alllll niiiight loooong and still want more.

[zapper501]

you are so full of nonsense it is unbelievable

[TardisJockey]

I just love the argument that it's torture when it's being done to our guys, but it's totally acceptable when we do it because we're the good guys and the end justifies the means.

"This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened." -JFK

When we cease to practice these principles, then we destroy who and what we were meant to be when this country was founded. The true test of our mettle is in following these principles even when it's not convenient.

[iLogos]

Wow a conservative who seems to remember what that political stance is all about.