Senator McCain Says No To Torture
From CBS News – McCain: If U.S. uses torture, nation will suffer
(CBS News) Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years, has rejected the argument that torture was necessary to successfully combat terrorism – and denied claims that waterboarding detainees provided intelligence that helped end the manhunt for Osama bin Laden.
On Thursday McCain spoke passionately on the U.S. Senate floor about waterboarding and other forms of torture (referred to by some as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) that some former Bush administration officials (including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) claim gave the U.S. the information that led years later to the hideout of Osama bin Laden.
…“The fact is that this courier was identified first by a person who was not been held in U.S. custody,” McCain said. “In fact, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not only did not tell the truth about this courier, he even tried to mislead the interrogators by saying that the courier had retired, gotten married, and lived in Peshawar!”
McCain told anchor Erica Hill this highlights the fact that, “If you inflict enough physical pain on someone, they will tell you whatever they think is necessary to get that pain to stop.
“Through normal, conventional interrogation techniques – and by the way I’ve seen it in Bagram – and with without these enhanced interrogation techniques, we can get more accurate, more valuable information,” McCain continued. “And most importantly, preserve our commitments by our Constitution, by the Geneva Conventions, and by other agreements, that we will not practice cruel and inhumane treatment on people who are in our custody.”
John McCain was a POW who was subjected to torture in a North Vietnamese camp, and I was an interrogator. He is a conservative and I am a liberal. We are both telling you the same thing – TORTURE DOES NOT WORK.
4 comments
Kudos to Sen. McCain. On the one hand, I’m glad he’s not president… yes, he would in fact be worse than Obama, for several reasons I won’t go into here. But somebody who has actually experienced torture in the real world, someone with credibility on the usually extremist side of the aisle, needs to say these things directly to the U.S. Senate. Nothing else has any hope of heading off the shame of Americans practicing torture… sorry; I won’t mince words; it’s torture… against people who have undergone not one shred of due process of law, domestic or international.
I really appreciate the fact that he called out some of those making the claims for the efficacy of torture. When Cheney and his fifth draft deferment, Liz, get air time to make these claim it really rubs me the wrong way.
I want the guilty punished. I’m sick and tired of people screwing up real investigations and intelligence work because they are looking for a “magic bullet”, a “quick fix”, a shortcut, rather than doing the job.
*shrug* None of the rightwing retards listen to me either. So what’s new? Same old club… preaching to the choir.
I don’t give McCain a lot of credit actually. If he really had any integrity and gut’s, he would have said it years ago when it was really necessary. Obviously, he decided ass-kissing the lunatics and running for Prez on deluded lies was more important. And again… what’s new about that?
And it won’t make much difference anyway. The lunatics will just ignore McCain and throw him under a bus. It’s always what they do when someone breaks ranks and has a momentary honesty and/or reality lapse. *shrug*
I guess he’s decided that he won’t be Prez now, so… what the hell? The truth can’t hurt now. Well… a minor fraction of truth at any rate. I won’t hold my breath for the rest.
I think he was more than a little annoyed that the Hedgemony was trying to polish the Shrubbery’s image at the expense of other people, many of whom are in the Navy and would have been complaining to McCain.
The other thing is that if torture works, they are saying the “confession” McCain gave was true, and he told the North Vietnamese everything he knew when he was tortured. That is an implication that really pisses off former POWs.
I think he is still angry over the primary challenge launched by the Tea Party whackoes in his Senate reelection and the lack of respect from the Republican Party. He went along with a lot of crap that Bush pulled, and got nothing in return.