In the following video and linked Op-Ed by Sen. John McCain, you will see some personal thoughts from John McCain as well as misstatements of what and how we interrogate and how he was interrogated.
Here is an article linked to me as well by a friendly political nemesis: John McCain to Bush apologists: Stop lying about Bin Laden and torture
Okay, firstly, there is a huge difference between what McCain went through and what these CIA guys did. In McCain’s case, they were straight torturing hi to get his to sign a confession and get simple operational info from him. This is not the case in regards to the enhanced interrogations, three of which included water-boarding. A great example is the wealth of information just found at Osama’s compound. The U.S. intelligence apparatus is going to digest, separate, collate this info which includes names, pseudo-names, places, operations, phone numbers, addresses, and the like. When they catch someone of interest, they will sleep deprive them, give false and misleading promises info to trip up said persons stated outline because the info taken from a previous source shows this persons thesis to be a lie.Here is what McCain thinks it is:
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading. (Post Opinions)
They [the CIA interrogators in this case] will bring to the table an aspect they wish to get information on from this cache of info to get reactions, to get admissions, etc. Admissions to ALREADY existing details and knowledge (in whole or part) about the truth of the matter. Not signing an admission for the North Vietnamese Communists to use as propaganda and allow the Left in that day to sympathize with these brutal killers and Marxist animals:
The aim of the torture was usually not acquiring military information;[7] rather, it was to break the will of the prisoners, both individually and as a group.[7][14] The goal of the North Vietnamese was to get written or recorded statements from the prisoners that criticized U.S. conduct of the war and praised how the North Vietnamese treated them.[7] Such POW statements would be viewed as a propaganda victory in the battle to sway world and U.S. domestic opinion against the U.S. war effort.[7][10] In the end, North Vietnamese torture was sufficiently brutal and prolonged that virtually every American POW so subjected made a statement of some kind at some time.[15] (WIKI)
So McCain’s speech and op-ed really didn’t deal with this difference. And as much as McCain is a hero, he is really preferring non-sequiturs which the Left love and tun with. in other words, I was brutally tortured [to sign a statement], ergo, all interrogations are illegal. You see, McCain views these interrogations as illegal. Most of the people involved in this debate on my side of the aisle do not. Not to mention that this water-boarding technique used is very different from even what the Japanese did in WWII, which caused many deaths. In this interrogative technique, the person can be — within minutes — standing next to their interrogators (not to mention a medical team on call outside the door). In fact, KSM was water-boarded 183 times! He didn’t die. What McCain calls “enhanced interrogation” in Vietnam, torture, did kill many. BIG DIFFERENCE. One that Dennis Miller in Novemeber of 2006 speaks to:
So McCain is really off in this moral equivalency. Not to mention it worked in WWII, for the scholar:
Now, onto the rebuttal by a person brought up by name via McCain:
In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement.
To wit Attorney General Michael Mukasey responds:
Senator McCain described as “false” my statement that Khalid Sheik Mohammed broke under harsh interrogation that included waterboarding, and disclosed a torrent of information that included the nickname of Osama bin Laden’s courier. He strongly implied in the remainder of his column in the Washington Post that this harsh interrogation was not only useless but also illegal. He is simply incorrect on all three counts.
KSM disclosed the nickname – al Kuwaiti – along with a wealth of other information, some of which was used to stop terror plots then in progress. He did so after refusing to answer questions and, when asked if further plots were afoot, said that his interrogators would eventually find out. Another detainee, captured in Iraq, disclosed that al Kuwaiti was a trusted operative of KSM’s successor, abu Faraj al-Libbi. When al-Libbi went so far as to deny even knowing the man, his importance became obvious.
Both former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Michael McConnell have acknowledged repeatedly that up to 2006, many of the valuable leads pursued by the intelligence community came from the three prisoners who were subjected to harsh techniques that included waterboarding in order to secure their cooperation.
So far as the waterboarding technique used by CIA operators, as outlined in the memoranda released by the Department of Justice, it was entirely legal at the time, which is to say before the passage of later statutes in 2005 and 2006, by which time it was no longer in use and under which it has not been evaluated.
In other words, the harsh interrogation techniques were both effective and lawful.
So again, just as with Rumsfeld, the Democratic Left has taken a sound bite, not parsed through the “it does not follow” portions of it, misapplied it, and morally equated it to fit their argument. This time this is partly McCain’s fault as well. Another fail if you ask me. A fail how, the Left continues to misread what is being said by people like myself. Bil Whittle whittles this down for the reader:
From video description:
This is a smaller portion of this entire presentation found on Bill Whittles FIREWALL posting: http://youtu.be/MiYk8bxO7zQ
He also has a site where much of his work and membership to support it can be seen: http://www.declarationentertainment.com/
As well as his FB page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bill-Whittle/155840847453