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May 15, 2011 08:52 PM UTC

McCain, Udall Shut Down Torture Cheerleaders

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As hard as we were on 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain back in the day, we would be remiss if we didn’t take note of his recent high profile–refuting claims by defenders of the Bush administration that so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which McCain generally considers to be torture, helped bring Osama bin Laden to justice. CBS reported Friday:

On Thursday McCain spoke passionately on the U.S. Senate floor about waterboarding and other forms of torture (referred to by some as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) that some former Bush administration officials (including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) claim gave the U.S. the information that led years later to the hideout of Osama bin Laden.

…On CBS’ “The Early Show” Friday, McCain denied claims made by Rep. Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who said earlier this week that through the use of such tactics, a courier for the al Qaeda leader was identified. “We got vital information, which directly led us to bin Laden,” King said.

“The fact is that this courier was identified first by a person who was not been held in U.S. custody,” McCain said. “In fact, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed not only did not tell the truth about this courier, he even tried to mislead the interrogators by saying that the courier had retired, gotten married, and lived in Peshawar!”

McCain told anchor Erica Hill this highlights the fact that, “If you inflict enough physical pain on someone, they will tell you whatever they think is necessary to get that pain to stop.”

It’s worth noting that what McCain said this weekend is consistent with what Colorado Sen. Mark Udall of the Armed Services Committee said immediately following the killing of bin Laden. As the Pueblo Chieftain reported on May 4, just a couple of days after:

There were several references in news reports [May 3] to unidentified CIA officials saying that key information in the decade-long hunt for bin Laden was developed in controversial interrogations of captured al-Qaida officials who were subjected to a simulated drowning technique called waterboarding.

Asked about that, Udall largely dismissed that.

“I would tell you that we’ve generated about all the information that we considered to be actionable by what we describe as civilized interrogation techniques, where you befriend the individual or treat them with respect, rather than torture them,” [Pols emphasis] Udall said.

Much of the American public, hopped up on episodes of 24 where apparently torture is the only way to ever save the world, still thinks that torture is sometimes appropriate according to polls. Every conservative pundit has his favorite scenario–we particularly like Sean Hannity’s story about your kids being kidnapped, and you’ve caught one of the perps. In that situation, says Hannity, every red-blooded American would go to work with a car battery on the guy’s testicles.

Electoral politics, more to the point the elected politicians who have defended the more controversial interrogation practices employed by the Bush administration–and now need defending themselves–are why this question of whether or not “torture helped us get bin Laden” is relevant at all. Obviously if all those years of “black sites,” waterboarding, and sleep deprivation were unnecessary, or even counterproductive, as McCain and Mark Udall suggest…

Anyway, it’s easy to understand why the political desire for torture to have played a role in getting bin Laden is there. But if the facts don’t point to that conclusion, the politics of this long debate could leave politicians on the wrong side with much to answer for. It sometimes takes awhile, like the political consequences of McCarthyism, or resistance to civil rights in the 1960s. But the efficacy of torture, as debunked by McCain–and Udall–may yet factor at the ballot box.

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21 thoughts on “McCain, Udall Shut Down Torture Cheerleaders”

  1. That the primary revision that GOPers seem to want to use to salvage the Bush presidency is that torture is good. torture is American, blather blah yada, etc.

    Mr. Penry’s latest ‘column’ in the GJ paper is all about how necessary torture is and how well it jives with American values.

    Shameful, embarrassing and standard Josh.  

    1. Like maybe we should start releasing videos of suspects with burlap over their heads, scared, crying, and begging. Then, when we don’t get what we want (or even if we do), we can just behead them.

      Americans need to stand strong in the fight to not be like terrorists. Strong. Decisive. No rights. America, fuck yeah!

      So definitely good on McCain. But I guess he knows better than the rest of us what separates the goodies from the baddies.

    2. The worse torture Penry every received was a tongue lashing from his Daddy who ruled his universe until… Never mind, that changes the subject.  

  2. after he 50th, hundreth or hundred and eighty third waterboarding , a criminal act for which both Japanese and American soldiers and civilians have been successfully prosecuted under US law. Also, if it worked so great, why is it that the Bush administration didn’t bag bin Laden long ago?

    Bottom line.  Yes, some of the info you get may be accurate but since people will say anything under torture, most is not and none of it is as reliable as the info obtained by other far more effective, tried and true and reliable means.  Those who have actually been tortured, Like McCain, attest to that.  

    Hannity’s analogy is irrelevant since it’s based on a fantasy of the parent being the hero who gets the bad guy in the first place.  How often outside of movies does  that happen?  Let Hannity produce a single real life instance of angry dad torturing the bad guy and rescuing his child as a result. So far not a single person, public, elected, cabinet member, member of the military has offered a single documented example of a real life 24 scenario.

    None of which changes the fact that if we use torture we become torturers, we are all debased and we lose everything we say are fighting for. Police states are much more secure than our open society. Security isn’t everything.

    1. As the dead guvs point out the favorite excuse, back in the day, was the Jack Bauer scenario, ticking nuke time bomb, NYC about to be reduced to cinders, etc.  WE HAVE TO ACT NOW!!!

      This scenario is so unlike that it’s no wonder the torture-lovers fail to remind us of that glaring incongruity in the chronology.  

      Torture is abhorrent.  Its UnAmerican.  It is against our values.  Its efficacy is questionable, and it says a lot about the current state of the GOP party that they are so terribly enamored with it.  

      1. are sick puppies (sorry, an insult to puppies everywhere).  And they don’t even know when they’re supposed to crawl back under the rocks they came from.

    2. Bottom line isn’t whether torture can sometimes be effective. We would catch more criminals if we abolished the Fourth Amendment, there’s no doubt. What Bush & Co. did was wrong, it was illegal, and it was unAmerican. Grasping at the slimmest of straws to justify their crimes years later stinks of desperation, and John McCain is right to shut that nonsense down.

      1. We would catch more criminals if we abolished the Fourth Amendment, there’s no doubt.

        Yes, most likely. Along with non-criminals from the false information.

        If only we had a group of Americans as fervent about the Fourth Amendment as the Second.

  3. It’s not who we are, not who we aspire to be, nor what we will tolerate.

    Good on McCain.

    I’m reading a great new book by Erik Larsen called “In the Garden of Beasts” about the American diplomat chosen by Roosevelt (no one else wanted the job it appears) as the ambassador to Germany. William Dodd, a history professor from Chicago, seemed quite out of place and unsuited for the job, but I digress.

    Torture is so barbarian.  

  4. Something happened to him for a bit there in 08 – seems to be over now.

    Btw- a bona fide ware hero and great American any way you look at it.

  5. Ok, let’s all praise McCain for being correct now. But I can’t forget that in 2008, while running for President, McCain equivocated. He voted against prohibiting the CIA from using techniques prohibited by the military field manual. He rationalized that waterboarding was torture, but that the CIA should not be prohibited by law from engaging in other actions banned by the field manuals.

    McCain’s speaking out now is helpful–and the correct thing to do. But by his past actions he lost credibility.  

  6. and serial killers and thieves and Timothy McVeigh and that dumbass who tried to bomb Southwest Plaza, then why the hell isn’t it good enough to catch and capture terrorists?

    Every day we trust our law enforcement agencies and courts to catch and punish the worst people in our society and we expect them to do it honestly, honorably and without prejudices. When they don’t we call them out and raise hell because to do their jobs otherwise would be un-American.

    Anyone promoting torture as an American value is stupid and kidding themselves.

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