Oh to be a fly on the NBC cafeteria wall next time Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews run into each other.  On today’s Morning Joe, Scarborough singled out Hardball as an example of the cable shows he doesn’t watch because their guests “vomit bad information” for which they’re cheered.

Scarborough slammed Bob Baer, a former CIA agent, who on yesterday’s Hardball claimed “you cannot rely on torture,” and that the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Abu Zubaydah produced only “fantasies” that “got us nowhere.”  Reacting to the report that KSM had been waterboarded 183 times, Baer declared: “I can pretty well safely say the man is brain-dead.”

Baer’s comments unleashed a torrent of criticism from Scarborough. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I don’t usually watch some of the cable shows at night.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Uh-oh; what did you watch?

SCARBOROUGH: I’m not going to say.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, no.

SCARBOROUGH: Because you get such bad information.  You really do. People come on, they vomit out bad information and they get cheered.  They might as well have an applause track. So a guy went on last night, and we’re going to play the clip later, and he actually said a couple of things that were so outrageously wrong, and he’s a former CIA agent, but he makes money, obviously, trashing the CIA.

After playing the Baer clip, Scarborough resumed his slamming.

SCARBOROUGH: I don’t know if Mr. Baer doesn’t have a TV set. If he did, this could have been cleared up before he went on TV and embarrassed himself.

Joe called out “Bob Baer, and anybody else that books Bob Baer,” then cited the memo from National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair concluding that the enhanced interrogation yielded “high value information.”

Scarborough also pointed out that, far from being “brain-dead” as Baer had claimed, KSM impressed those who dealt with him at his trial and elsewhere with his shrewdness and sophistication.

And a bit later . . .

SCARBOROUGH: So Bob Baer first of all said that this was not actionable intelligence. And I only say this because this is the information that gets out on TV and on the newspapers and magazines, and I can understand why Americans are confused, and I apologize that people are giving you bad information. But when he says we got no information, and Dennis Blair says we got a lot of information and we understand al Qaeda because of those techniques, number one, he’s wrong. Number two, he says Khalid Sheikh Mohamed is brain-dead, close to brain-dead? If he had a TV set, just watched TV or read newspapers, he would know that was wrong. And the third thing was–and I’m surprised Bob Baer doesn’t know this–and I’m just going to say this because you will also know this.  You get reports that KSM was waterboarded 186 times, and so, we said, did they strap him down the entire month?

BRZEZINSKI: Did they hold him under water for a month?

SCARBOROUGH: Exactly!  They set it up, and the way they counted waterboarding [making small hand motions], every time you poured water on, if a drop went on him, you mark that down: he’s been waterboarded one time. So in one session you could have 20, 30, 40 waterboardings, where they tip it over: talk to him; tip it over: talk.  I’m not saying that’s moral or immoral: you’re going to have to judge that as an American and what you want this country to be. I’m just saying, the misinformation continues and it’s very bad for the country. And again, as we said Mika, the people who suffer are our CIA agents, who are painted as beasts by people who should know better.

Whoa: Joe apologizing for bad information doled out by Matthews’ guest.  Fun times at the network tonight!