Rush Limbaugh responded to the Obama administration’s release of the four OLC torture memos by, not only defending torture, but by using Sen. John McCain as an example that torture works. He claimed that the North Vietnamese broke McCain, but according to McCain, this isn’t true.
Rush asked, “The idea that torture doesn’t work– that’s been put out from John McCain on down– You know, for the longest time McCain said torture doesn’t work then he admitted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer that he was broken by North Vietnamese. So what are we to think here?” The problem is that this isn’t exactly true. McCain has often used his story as evidence that torture doesn't work.
According to McCain’s book Faith of My Fathers, he gave his captors information that he made up, or was useless to the N. Vietnamese, “Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed. [Page 194*].” This is a story that McCain told numerous times during the 2008 presidential campaign, although he tended to adjust the name of the football team involved, the story stayed the same.
The one thing all of these people who support torture have in common is that they never served in the military. I may not have supported John McCain in the last election, but he made one of the most extreme sacrifices that a person can make for their country. It is sickening that those on the right, including Limbaugh would seek to warp his service.
I suggest that we let all of the torture advocates try out these techniques. If they think it easy as pie, then get water boarded, be placed in restraints and be left standing or hanging for hours. I’ll bet that all of these cowards would be crying by the end. If anyone wants to support torture as a political position, they are free to do so, but don’t demean the service of someone else while doing so.
At this point I am pretty sure he is just trying to get a rise out of everyone.
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"It was cut because an Army Ordnance panel determined that a weapon that kills an enemy soldier 10 times before he hits the ground was a waste of resources, so they scaled it back to only kill him 3 times."-Anon, on the cancellation of the Army's multi-kill vehicle.
KrauserKrauser wrote:Isn't that what he always does?
No, he tends not to go after vets only their families and democratic vets. He will get shit for this, don't be surprised if he gets into a little bit of trouble for this. Not much but some. It's a damn shame Hanns Joachim Scharff died in the 90's. Had he held on for another decade his direct experience would have been invaluable for countering torture works idiots like Rush.
(For those that don't recognize the name Mr Scharff was a highly decorated Luftwaffe WWII interrogator who was know as the most successful interrogator of that war and he after the war spoke several times at places such as the War collage, the CIA and elsewhere on Nazi interrogation methods)
And Mr Scharff died an American citizen because those who he interrogated where among his strongest advocates when he applied for US citizenship. I fully recommend his book (The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff: Master Interrogator of the Luftwaffe) as a good read and a story of how to get useful information from POW's.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
So torture works if you want useless and falsified information, is that what you're saying, Rush?
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-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
So torture works if you want useless and falsified information, is that what you're saying, Rush?
Well that is what the Cheney-Bush Junta was after. If you want to lie a country into a war, you need high octane lies -like the one where Al-Qaeda was in cahoots with Iraq and so on. The best way to get people to swear to the most preposterous lies is to torture them, as Johannes Junius learned the hard way.
Johannes Junius wrote:Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head and - God pity him- bethinks him of something.
Remember, we're burning witches over there so we don't have to burn them here.
The most convincing case that I have seen on behalf of torture was made in an October 2003 piece for The Atlantic by Mark Bowden, titled "The Dark Art of Interrogation."
Considering the difficulties of verification and the enormous political cost of being seen to perpetrate these kinds of activities as we attempt to win hearts and minds, torture doesn't make sense even from a cost/benefit point of view, leaving all moral questions aside.
