I'm sure you've already read theSullivan article that mentions that according to the Bush Administration's definitions McCain was not actually tortured during his time in Vietnam.
The fact McCain voted against a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using some of these said techniques makes it an issue that sticks to McCain as well. Soon the thought came to me, how could this be better brought out to the general public. I could actually make a blog and write about it, or make yet another diary on the subject, though kosand jpadgetthave beaten me to it. What would be better would be if some collective internet action could generate attention. A sort of internet protest...a wikipedia bomb. The problem is I don't know if this would be a grand gesture or just ignored as random wikipedia vandalism.
Details below the fold.
As Stephen Colbert proved long ago, Wikipedia can shift reality. So I thought of a simple action. What if I made an edit to the page of John McCain and wherever it mentions he was tortured, I edited to say he had been subject to enhanced interrogation techniques?
This action could be fixed by someone else within hours, or minutes, so it's impact would be short, and if I did it more than once any account I made would likely be banned for supporting vandalism. The account might get banned the first time it was done. But maybe it would stay there for a while and people would notice it...and perhaps if someone else did the same edit again, it would stay up for a day, and if ten people did it, it might stay up longer.
This, of course, likely ends with McCain's page becoming permanently blocked, but it might also end with someone in the traditional media finding an amusing story to write about.
The article for John McCain is currently semi-protected, meaning only users who have accounts that are about 4 days old and with a modest number of previous edits could change it.
There are only three times in the current article where it mentions McCain or other prisoners in North Vietnam undergoing torture.
He was held from 1967 to 1973, experiencing episodes of torture and refusing an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer; his war wounds would leave him with lifelong physical limitations.
In August 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain.[41] He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[30][41] Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, which was stopped by guards.[30] After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession".[30] He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[42][43] His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.[44] He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.[45] Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements.[46]
The first of these three is also a link to the Wikipedia article on torture. There are two other times the word torture is used in the article but they are from a quote from President Bush and would not be changed.
So four alterations would be hypothetically made. change the three instances of torture to enhanced interrogation techniques, making sure the tense makes sense and changing the wiki link from the torture page to the Enhanced Interrogation Technique page.
Sometimes google bombs end up with traditional media attention, maybe this would too.