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SummerSnow

(12,608 posts)
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 09:17 PM Dec 2014

Are the Rethugs willing to tell John McCain that he wasn't tortured?

Since they argue that what the CIA did wasn't torture.

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Account of John McCains torture as a POW- Adapted and extracted from Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain

When I came to the second time, I was being hauled ashore on bamboo poles. A crowd of several hundred Vietnamese gathered around me, stripping my clothes off, spitting on me and kicking and striking me.

When they had finished removing my gear and clothes, I felt a sharp pain in my right knee. I looked down and saw that my right foot was resting next to my left knee at a 90 degree angle.

I cried out: "My God, my leg!"


For almost two months, nothing happened. Then the punishment sessions began. I was hauled into an empty room and kept there for four days. At intervals, the guards returned to administer beatings.

One guard held me while the others pounded away.

They cracked several of my ribs and broke a couple of teeth. Weakened by beatings and dysentery, with my right leg again almost useless, I found it impossible to stand.

On the third night I lay in my blood and waste, so tired and hurt that I could not move. Three guards lifted me to my feet and gave me the worst beating yet. They left me lying on the floor moaning from the stabbing pain in my re-fractured arm.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/mccains-account-of-viet-cong-torture/story-e6frf7lx-1111115686152?nk=80922ec0dc583b87ba407320135349b4

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Are the Rethugs willing to tell John McCain that he wasn't tortured? (Original Post) SummerSnow Dec 2014 OP
Yup, without blinking an eye still_one Dec 2014 #1
They don't have a problem with saying horrible things Kalidurga Dec 2014 #2
So "Songbird" was subject to enhanced interrogation techniques only? Not torture by cons definition? Fred Sanders Dec 2014 #3

Kalidurga

(14,177 posts)
2. They don't have a problem with saying horrible things
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 09:42 PM
Dec 2014

to each other, to us, to anyone really. They would curse their grandmother if she said anything nice about taxes.

Fred Sanders

(23,946 posts)
3. So "Songbird" was subject to enhanced interrogation techniques only? Not torture by cons definition?
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 10:18 PM
Dec 2014

Although he did in fact provide a lot of valuable information that saved Viet Cong lives, so it was justified.

"McCain’s own tale of his torture and the confession he recorded for the North Vietnamese comes largely from his book Faith of My Fathers, in which he describes his shame at cooperating with the enemy. But some of McCain’s fellow prisoners, who were tortured and did not collaborate, have challenged his narrative, expressing their belief that McCain was not physically abused at all and that he was well treated. Others who were also in the prison camp dispute that claim. But by McCain’s own account he may have begun cooperating with the North Vietnamese within three days of his capture and was fully on board within two weeks, providing specific intelligence on his aircraft carrier, its aircraft, and the support vessels attached to it, information that was later featured in North Vietnamese radio broadcasts. One account that appeared on a wire service entitled “PW Songbird is Pilot Son of Admiral” reported that McCain may have gone beyond an acceptable level of collaboration in assisting the psychological warfare offensives aimed at American servicemen: “The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam."

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