McCain: Waterboardings "Unacceptable" ("Waterboarding is Torture, Period")

by Damozel |  Sen. McCain doesn't think Obama should have released the memos.  Otherwise, he takes a strong stand against torture.  He says that whether or not they got useful information -- and he thinks not -- waterboarding and other forms of harsh interrogation will simply be used as recruiting tools by Al Qaeda.

 A t HuffPost, Jason Linkins has the story and also the transcription.

McCain responds...:

It's unacceptable. It's unacceptable. One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period. I can ensure you that once enough physical pain is inflicted on someone, they will tell that interrogator whateve r they think they want to hear. And most  importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us. And I've seen concrete examples of that talking to former high-ranking al-Qaeda individuals in Iraq.

Asked to respond to reports from pro-torture officials who claim the practice yielded good intelligence, McCain didn't budge:

According to the FBI, they did not. According to the CIA, they did. With all due respect, my view is, whether they did or not, the image of the United States of America throughout the world is a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists. And I got that from a former high-ranking al Qaeda in Iraq.

Linkins says:

McCain's batting down a critical meme, here, continually pointing out that al Qaeda is cognizant of the torture practices and specifically exploiting them for their own ends. So while McCain can be frustrating in terms of prescribing a policy solution to end the practice of torture in a way that eliminates loopholes, he nevertheless remains one of the better advocates against the practice of torture itself.

* Photo by Salim Virji | pursuant to CC license

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Comments

[Chip H]

All his bill did was redefine the terms of torture so it conformed to what had been publicly released at the time, so McCain could pretend to be a War Hero pre-election. Read the bill, classic poliburo double-speak. Now he's caught with his #### in his zipper. When I was coming up in the South, they call a slink like McCain a 'crawl under a snake'.