Little Boy and Fat Man for dummies

Cliff May is the former New York Times reporter who now hangs out his shingle at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. This week he undertook the task of appearing on Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central news show to correct the canards heedlessly spewed by Stewart and others on the subject of “torture.”

May knew it was a thankless task before a hostile crowd. Stewart is full of the applicable leftist bromides. May tried to introduce the reality principle. (The video is available here.) Stewart acts like it is an ordeal for him to allow May to speak, and not just because allowing May to speak interrupts Stewart’s facile declamations.

In the course of the conversation with May, Stewart adjudjed Harry Truman a “war criminal” for the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stewart has since apologized for his remarks about Truman. His sobriety on the contemporary issues awaits a new day.

In the meantime, we can thank May for having elicited a takedown for the ages on Pajamas TV by Bill Whittle. Whittle rises to the defense of Truman (and other American presidents) who have not hesitated to direct the United States to victory in war. Toward the end Whittle works in a touching autobiographical angle as well. Watch it all.

Via Andrew Breitbart.

PAUL adds: Cliff says that a number of his friends urged him not to debate Stewart. In a rare outbreak of good judgment, I encouraged Cliff to proceed because I know how good he is at this kind of thing.

Cliff should be congratulated for going ahead, and for the outstanding job he did.

JOHN adds: If you don’t do anything else today, watch the Whittle video on PJTV. It is a classic, and it will tell you things you didn’t know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I hope it will convince you that PJTV is worthy of your support.

It’s interesting that Stewart has now apologized for his attack on Truman. He really did need to take the position he did in the debate with May, because there is no logically consistent way to argue that it was OK to incinerate over 100,000 innocent Japanese, but not OK to scare Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–while doing him him no, zero–physical harm. By apologizing for his slander of Truman, Stewart concedes the argument to May.

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