The NY times has published McCain's National War College essay, written in April 1974. Although the point of the thesis is to offer possible changes in the POW code taught to U.S. soldiers, it is a fascinating look at McCain's thinking vis-a-vis Vietnam War (was for it, unquestionably), the antiwar movements (he despised them), and -- most interesting -- his description of the North Vietnamese torture methods.
Guess what -- most of these North Vietnamese tactics are being used today in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan. And while McCain has talked a good game about opposing these tactics, during the last eight years he has badly compromised these values in the hopes of winning over the pro-torture right wing Republican base.
Let's look at the contrasts between McCain in 1974 and the McCain/Bush policies of the last eight years.
Pages 7-8:
From 1965 to 1970 most prisoners were kept in individual cells or in small cells housing only two or three persons. All forms of communication between prisoners were strictly forbidden. Some of the most severe punishments were dealt out as a result of prisoners being apprehended while communicating....
Sounds like the description of Guantanamo Bay found on Wikipedia:
Detainees are kept in isolation most of the day, are blindfolded when moving within the camp and are forbidden to talk in groups of more than three. United States doctrine in dealing with prisoners of war states that isolation and silence are effective means of breaking down resistance to interrogation and is a deterrent to collaboration amongst detainees. Red Cross inspectors and released detainees have alleged acts of torture[21] [22], including sleep deprivation, beatings and locking in confined and cold cells. Human rights groups argue that indefinite detention constitutes torture.
While McCain has rightly called for the closing of Guantanamo, he also voted in favor of the 2006 Military Commissions Act that denies these prisoners the right to appeal their imprisonment. He also blasted last week's Supreme Court decision restoring habeus corpus as "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country".
McCain, page 8:
Psychologists say that after about 60 days of solitary confinement a human begins to suffer permanent mental deterioration.
Remember U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, imprisoned without charges for four years?
Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”
....
In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”
Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.
McCain does not mention any instances where the North Vietnamese forced a prisoner into 4 years of solitary confinement, yet that is exactly what our government did to Padilla. While McCain questioned the treatment of Padilla, he did not use his influence with President Bush to see that justice was done. Instead, it was once again up to the Supreme Court to force Bush's hand; McCain was all talk, no action.
Page 9:
One of the standard methods to wear down a prisoner's resistance to their demands was the use of what could be described as "self-induced" punishment. That is to say, prisoners being ordered to sit, kneel, or stand for long periods of time deprived of rest or sleep. This form of torture, without laying a hand on a prisoner, was sometimes very successful in breaking his will.
As Marty Lederman noted earlier this year, McCain backtracked on his opposition to these North Vietnamese torture techniques by voting against the Feinstein amendment (hat tip Hilzoy):
Senator McCain rightly insists that the U.S. may not (i) torture; (ii) engage in cruel treatment prohibited by Common Article 3; or (iii) engage in conduct that shocks the conscience, under the McCain Amendment. He also insists that waterboarding violates each of these legal restrictions, that the Bush Administration's legal analysis has been dishonest and flatly wrong, and that we need "a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program."
The Feinstein Amendment would have accomplished all of these objectives, but Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of other of its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain has not explained which of these he thinks are not torture and cruel treatment, nor which he would wish to preserve for use by the CIA. But if the President does as he has promised and follows Senator McCain's lead by vetoing this bill, the CIA will continue to assert the right to use all of these techniques -- and possibly waterboarding, as well.
John McCain, Page 10:
Many ex-POWS have stated that due to the length and divisiveness of the Vietnam conflict, if the policy of the North Vietnamese towards the captured Americans had been of strict adherence to the Geneva Convention the North Vietnamese might have returned a group of men who would have been grateful and sympathetic to their problems in that part of the world. Instead, a dedicated group of anti-communists have emerged from that ordeal.
Sound familiar? This week's McClatchy article about the men who have been released from Guantanamo Bay stated this:
The McClatchy reporting also documented how U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.
Yet McCain, instead of using this as a reason to further oppose torture, uses it at a reason to keep people locked up forever. Here is what he said just last week:
I won't go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have.
And my friends there are some bad people down there. There are some bad people. So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases.
By the way, 30 of the people who have already been released from Guantanamo Bay have already tried to attack America again, one of them just a couple weeks ago, a suicide bomber in Iraq. Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation, and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.
The fact that McCain uses the words "so-called, quote, Habeus Corpus" shows the depths to which he has sold out his honor and dignity on this issue, all in the name of political expediency. His complete disdain for the human rights of these detainees, many of whom are probably innocent, is shocking considering that McCain was a prisoner of war himself.
Page 11:
Within our society, especially in the military, members practice honesty and openess. In order to survive as a prisoner one has to learn to lie, deceive and steal.
Back in 1974, McCain knew that POWs would have to engage in whatever means necessary to survive. Yet today, he supports an administration that is so desperate to demonize these War on Terror POWs that even suicide is called "an act of warfare".
The hypocrisy on McCain's part is incredible and sad. For someone who was himself tortured, and who talks such a big game about following the Geneva Conventions and outlawing torture, his statements and actions over the last eight years show him to be either a shameless flip-flopper, a liar, or both.
Yet McCain doesn't have to worry about the repercussions of his actions, or the actions of his Republican friends. After all, tucked into the 2006 Military Commissions Bill that he helped pass is this little nugget:
Part of the act was an amendment which retroactively rewrote the War Crimes Act effectively making policy makers, i.e. politicians and military leaders, and those applying policy, i.e. CIA interogators and soldiers, no longer subject to legal prosecution under US law for what before the amendment was defined as a war crime.
I think Josh Marshall sums it up best:
Someone who is a master of the politics of opportunism can manage countless transformations. Not someone whose whole schtick is candor, authenticity and integrity. McCain is a good example of the fact that life can take almost everything away from you, and usually does. But your dignity you've got to give away. And he did.
[Crossposted at Old Man McCain]