Via
the Rude Pundit:
John McCain: Torture Worked on Me
Basically, the geniuses at NewsMax claim that McCain has no leg to stand on in opposing torture because he gave in to it. I can only begin to articulate how angry this makes me. I should be laughing, though, for reasons I'll note after the flip.
I should note at the outset that I have a love-hate relationship with McCain. But whatever your feelings about the man, it is a fact that he served his country, and it is a fact that he underwent considerable hardship and suffering in doing so.
So, now, allow me to bracket a long stream of obscenities directed at the defense of torture [multiple expletives deleted] because that's not the point. All non-fascist sympathizers agree that torture is morally wrong.
Why I should be laughing, I guess, is that the article contains within it the seeds of its own undoing:
"For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards . . . Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope."
McCain was taken to an interrogation room and ordered to sign a document confessing to war crimes. "I signed it," he recalled. "It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities."
"I had learned what we all learned over there," McCain said. "Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."
That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work.
Here's the thing. He wound up confessing to things he hadn't done, vague generalities about war crimes. This is, I would submit,
PRECISELY why torture doesn't work. People will say anything to make the pain stop. And the Torquemada-tuggers at NewsMax don't seem to understand that when it's right in their faces. Perhaps they need
an electric drill to get it through their thick skulls.
But if anyone runs across this later somewhere, remember that it's what McCain himself said that justifies his stance--it's not whether you break, but what happens when you do.