Note to Conservatives: Fox's "24" is not "a national referendum" on torture...

This is a guest post written by Andrew Ironside. It first appeared on Media Matters for America.

In his January 30 syndicated column, Cal Thomas attacked "ideologically decrepit" Iraq war protesters and claimed: "Unlike Vietnam, the Islamofascists won't leave us alone if we leave Iraq before stability is established." Discussing the possible consequences of exiting Iraq, Thomas referenced Fox Broadcasting's TV series 24: "Watch the TV drama '24' for what could be our prophetic and imminent future with a nuclear device exploding in major cities. Having concluded we don't have the stomach to fight them on their turf, they might understandably deduce we are even less willing to fight them on ours."

Thomas is not the first conservative to use 24 to forecast a nuclear attack on the United States. On the January 16 edition of Fox News' The Big Story -- airing a day after the premiere of 24's sixth season, in which "terrorists detonate a mini nuclear bomb in downtown Los Angeles" -- host John Gibson stated: "Well, certainly may be fiction for now. But 24's Jack Bauer has it right. People need to wake up to the possibility of nuclear attack." Gibson later asked: "Is 24's faux suitcase nuke bomb a real wake-up call for America? Should we take this as an early warning sign that something like this could happen here?" Jack Bauer is the show's main character, a member of the fictional "Counter Terrorist Unit."

Conservatives have also looked to the TV series for justification of…