This post first appeared at Mother Jones.
Last December, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its long-awaited torture report, which provided overwhelming evidence interrogation methods used after the attacks on September 11th to be largely ineffective and inhumane. Despite this, most Americans have yet to even skim the report’s findings and continue to believe torture tactics can successfully lead to reliable information.
“Torture is one of those things that is advertised as something that works, but doesn’t, like a Ford truck or those weird bottles of Horny Goat Weed available at your local bodega,” John Oliver explained on the latest Last Week Tonight. “But maybe the reason that so many of us innately believe that torture works is that it does on TV all the time. Look at 24.”
On Sunday, Oliver implored viewers to start paying attention — he even recruited the help of actress Helen Mirren to eloquently read some of the report’s most horrifying details — as Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein currently have the chance to pass a bill seeking to permanently ban specific torture methods for good.
“America should not be a country that tortures people because it is brutal. It is medieval and it is beneath us,” he said.
[Warning: Mature Audience.]
