Daily Show interview with Ronald Kessler

So first off, I loved Kessler's complete lack of humor throughout the interview. When Stewart asked him about terrorists' emoticons he just continued on as if nothing was said, which seeing that he's the underdog on a show like this, may not be a bad tactic.

So one of the main thrusts of Kessler's argument is that there haven't been any new attacks, so Bush's methods must be working. This is an argument used time and time again by the administration and frankly it's brilliant because it's so damn difficult to contradict. Logically, it's flawed as hell, but rhetorically, it's brilliant.

Also, he speaks about the Geneva Convention as if it had no guidelines for people outside of uniform. In doing so, he completely ignores Common Article Three and the UN Convention on Torture. Then he goes on to assert that waterboarding isn't really torture because it isn't painful. It's as if he teeters between "yes it's OK to torture these people because they weren't in uniform and killed people" and "water boarding isn't torture so it doesn't matter." I'm not quite sure how one can have it both ways.

Finally, I love how he says that Iraq has been used as a propaganda tool to fuel anti-American sentiment as if in reality, Iraq is flowers and rainbows and it's only those mean Arabs who are misconstruing the realities on the ground for political gain. I mean, innocent people have been jailed and tortured, huge segments of the population have fled due to violence, hundreds of thousands have died and the country is in shambles, but using any of this is merely hyperbole that exaggerates the situation! Now American politics, that's a place where there's no propaganda...only cold, hard facts and straight talk.