Comments for Does Bush Believe McCain Was Tortured? »
Posted By Neophile 1 year, 4 months ago in NewsIn all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.
Read Full Story at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com »
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fsev411 year, 4 months ago
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Strong argument that John McCain was not tortured by American standards. Maybe things weren't so bad in the Hanoi Hilton since it would appear to be treatment was on par with Guantanamo and our other "secret" prisons around the world. We need to ask John if he thinks he was tortured.
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neosucksComment removed: Hard Banned
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RickyDawkins1 year, 4 months ago
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McCain probably wouldn't last an hour with lil' Lynndie England
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynndie_England
Nor would he last 5 seconds on a watertortureboard.
"I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted."
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/127312.html
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super-sunshine1 year, 4 months ago
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The point isn't if he was tortured... He was... but does our Government see it as torture? No!!
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So baby bush and buddies would have to say McCain was not tortured... He was merely met with extreme negoations.... The things that Bush implemented in the USA government has been doing for nearly the last 8 years is turn our country into something it never ever stood for in the past.... We take torture methods from countries and former powers like China, Russia, and the Nazis and put them into place and then call it not torture so that the losers that implemented laws so that they can pretend like they are legal upstanding Human Beings.
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neosucksComment removed: Hard Banned
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gamahuche1 year, 4 months ago
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FTA
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But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against
American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn't, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.
Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.-
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gamahuche1 year, 4 months ago
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If Mr Bush were interested to clean up his legacy the only honourable course would be for him to demonstrate how harmless waterboarding really is.
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He could probably endow his library and also purchase the required book for it with the huge fee he could command for this performance.
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cowboygrandpa1 year, 4 months ago
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McCain has displayed the very reason he should not be elected.
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For one who is tortured then allows others to be tortured is as sick as those who do the torturing. They require mental health care.
They have no right to run a country with the arsenal to destroy most of the population in the world.
That is akin to soldiers who love war for the killing. They are not soldiers but murderers with a government issued weapon to kill with.
Bush, Cheney,Gonzales,Rice,Rumsfeld... Now McCain. The new American leaders, terrorist cowards who conduct torture as an information gathering technique.
Yes we have have fallen into the hands of scurrilous wretches. Next it will be the drafting of boys and old men into the armed forces to fight their ill conceived conflagarations.
Torture of women and children, is that next? Bush says he is a Christian. Show me where in the Bible the Christians were supposed to torture people.
Seems to me I remember the Christians being tortured and it being shown as wrong.
Bunch of panty waist buffooons whose morality comes from below, not above.-
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redmud1 year, 4 months ago
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Neither President Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, or Cheney were in the military in combat. I don't know about Gonzales. Cheney evaded the draft. The only top whitehouse advisor with any combat experience was Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld did not like him and did his best to shut him out as well as the Pentagon. Rumsfeld demanded complete control of every aspect of the war. Bush relied on his advice & the buck stops there. Rumsfeld screwed up the war big time. I think if the president or more of his staff had combat military experience, or at least a real term in the military (not the national guard 30 yrs ago) there would have been a better outcome. You should read Bob Woodward's books on the war, one is called "Bush's War". I don't believe McCain is cut from the same cloth as these men. Don't judge him unless you have read about the 5 1/2 yrs he spent in the Hanoi Hilton. You should read the 1973 article In U.S. News & World Report called "How The POWs Fought back." McCain describes his POW experience. You can read this at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084711/posts
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mackiemesserComment removed: Retracted by user1 Reply
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cowboygrandpa1 year, 4 months ago
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markwawn2:
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""Songbird" John McCain." Although I find the mans politics and ways to be scurilous and preposterous. I cannot fault the mans saving his life and trying to stop the torture through co-operation with his captors.
After all we knew these statements were made under duress and caused by grievous mental and physical agony.
Who among us would not do the same?
That is why I find it so apalling that McCain would actually back this garbage.
No he is not deserving to be president, but he is not deserving of our scorn for breaking either. -
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redmud1 year, 4 months ago
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Good grief, where do you get your information from? Was it the former North Vietnamese government? There were no 32 propoganda films. He cracked one time during his 5 1/2 yrs and made a written statement. Many other POWs have cracked too. How much physical and mental torture could you take? Could you make it 5 1/2 yrs? Could you turn down the opportunity to go home? Read what really happened at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084711/posts
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This is the article written by McCain in 1975. Read this and see if you can judge him so harshly. Criticize his politics but leave his POW experience out of it. No POW deserves that.-
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markmawn21 year, 4 months ago
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Freeper, eh?
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I would probably sing as I have an extremely low torture threshold (Barry Manilow), am not the son of an Admiral, and will never run for President. However, the fishing stories McCain tells are exactly that. part truth, lots of hot air.
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/02/17/in-1992-pows-accused-mccain-of-collaborating-with-vietnamese/
I'm not judging, merely presenting a viewpoint that may not be common. But the POINT I was making....helooooo! THe point? Remeber that? Was that if he WERE to sing TODAY, he would have been tortured by OUR government for his supposed crimes against the state.
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silvera1 year, 4 months ago
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McCain was at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy where he was real party boy, he was shot down on his first mission, he spilled his guts while in captivity, he dumped his first wife for a trophy model, and he's now joined at the hip with the worst president in history. He's the man!
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AbuAmirahComment removed: Spammer, Hard Banned
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globalwarmer1 year, 4 months ago
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Makes you wonder.
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Do you really want a president that was tortured and most likely brain washed by communist captors?
Do you really want a president that suffers from post traumatic stress disorder?
Not that there aren't other reasons to not vote for McCain.
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redmud1 year, 4 months ago
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What kind of manure is this guy spreading around? Are people so young or ignorant that they don't comprehend what the POWs went through in Vietnam? Or in any war for that matter. Yes he was tortured. Read it for yourself. I bet less than 5% of those who commented have actually read McCain's account. Obviously the author of this article did not or he would not have mocked McCain being forced to stand for hours on end because he did this with a broken leg. McCain seeing the cross in the dirt was not recently remembered; he described his reliance on prayer to sustain him in the 1973 article that McCain wrote for U.S. New & World Report. The article is "How The POWs Fought Back." It can be read at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084711/posts McCain was a POW for 5 1/2 years! Who of you could have survived? I know the idiot who wrote this article wouldn't have. He's not smart enough nor does he have the courage. It's a cowardly thing to take pot shots at any POW.
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