Andrew Sullivan reminds us today of something that is missing in all this talk of crosses in the dirt.
More below the fold!
jpadgett's diary :: ::
Dead on from Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish:
In 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.
Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."
By all means, read the whole thing...
Sullivan's coup de grace:
...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.
Spread Sullivan's argument far and wide, folks. It's an ideal response to McSame's all-purpose POW stories.
Link to entire post with comments at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/162329/868/983/570573
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