Posted on 05/16/2011 2:33:08 PM PDT by Starman417
To be sure, waterboarding can be torture, depending on how it is carried out. “You can do waterboarding lots of different ways, “says former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, “you can get to the point that the person is actually drowning,” That would be torture- but that is not how the technique is carried out by the CIA.
-Pg 131, Courting Disaster
John McCain is intimately familiar with torture, having endured it at the hands of his Vietnamese captors during his years as a POW.
But he was never waterboarded. Not by the Spanish Inquisition. Not by the Japanese military. Not by the restrictive nature of the program as run by our CIA. And to be clear, he was tortured not to extract information that might save lives; he was tortured out of cruelty for torture's sake; and he was tortured to elicit a false confession for propaganda purposes. EITs are not used to obtain either confessions or information.
Nor was McCain ever an interrogator. Not in the FBI. Not in the CIA. Not in the military.
Yet McCain, like "Matthew Alexander", commands "authority" and respect on the topic matter because of their respective experiences.
The CIA interrogators involved in the program that used EITs on 30 out of 100 high value detainees that came into their hands (the other 2/3rds having received standard interrogation practices) are not at liberty to write books nor defend themselves from slander and distortions in the media; nor are they free to counter Alexander's testimony that comes buttressed with credible experience as a successful military interrogator.
In Marc Thiessen's book, Courting Disaster, the former Bush speech writer does a great job at trying to rectify the misperceptions and distortions regarding the nature of the CIA program that has been so relentlessly villified.
In one chapter (read pages 158-164), Thiessen also includes the opinions of 3 distinguished former Vietnam POWs to counteract the opinion of John McCain.
George Everett Day, Leo Thorsness, Jeremiah Denton are highly decorated war veterans and former POWs who experienced terrible torture at the hands of their captors. They scoff at the notion that what the CIA subjected their detainees to, up to and including waterboarding, even remotely amounts to their definition of torture.
[snip]
So much of what we've learned about al Qaeda, so many of the operations that have since been carried out in killing and capturing operatives, subsequently leading to more info and more kills and captures, can all be traced back to what we began learning about the al Qaeda network from CIA interrogations of HVTs. Waterboarding Zubaydah and KSM had a cascading effect, unlocking intell information that did not require more wateboardings, but which can trace their intell lineage back to the CIA program. By 2006, over half of what we knew about al Qaeda had come out of the CIA program.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Waterboarding does not meet the text book definition of torture which is to leave permanent damage or disfigurement.
The real torture is another McCain story .
His unwillingness to give GW Bush credit for anything at all is indicative of mental illness........IMO
McCain has always hated GWBush. McCain must have felt GW took HIS turn.
no more McCain
no more Cain
no more RINO
McCain is SO outspoken on something he apparently doesn’t care to learn the facts about. Shame on him for using his “credibility” of being a POW to present himself to the public as such an expert on all things torture that his must be the last word.
“EITs are not used to obtain either confessions or information.”
The public does NOT know that.
Why can't it be posted here?
And while we’re at it, let’s be abso-effing-lutely certain that all of America’s enemies worldwide know precisely everything there is to know about our intelligence gathering techniques and capabilities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.