John McCain Warns Trump Not to Bring Back Torture

[Seshmeister]

It's depressing this is even an issue...

John McCain Warns Trump Not to Bring Back Torture
By Chas Danner




Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, told a security conference on Saturday that the U.S. will not resume the practice of torturing prisoners for information, despite president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises to do so. Answering a question at the Halifax International Security Forum about what powers Congress has to prevent a president from allowing waterboarding, McCain got agitated and noted that waterboarding and other forms of torture now violate both the Geneva Convention and U.S. law:

If [any agency of government] started waterboarding, I swear to you, there’s a whole bunch of us that would have them in court in a New York minute. And there’s no judge in America that wouldn’t say they’re in violation of the law because it’s specifically, in law, now prohibited. So I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do, or anybody else wants to do, we will not waterboard, we will not torture, we will not torture people … it doesn’t work, my friends, it doesn’t work.

The audience broke into applause when McCain got to the “we will not torture” part, and he later added, “My god, what does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people,” before declaring that the practice invalidates America’s moral superiority in the world, at which point the crowd applauded again.

Senator McCain, though he ultimately supported Donald Trump after the businessman won the GOP nomination, had opposed the candidate during the Republican primaries, complaining that Trump was “firing up the crazies” with his anti-immigration rhetoric. At one point, Trump infamously ridiculed McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and said that the Arizona senator was not a war hero because of it. Trump was roundly criticized over his comments, but as with virtually all the false or offensive things Trump said over the course of his presidential campaign, the attack on McCain had no decisive impact, including, ultimately, on McCain’s willingness to support Trump as the GOP nominee. (McCain later withdrew his support for Trump in October, following the release of an Access Hollywood tape on which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women.)

During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly endorsed the use of torture and falsely insisted that it was an effective way to obtain information. Trump’s nominee for National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, also believes that waterboarding is a technique that should be an available to U.S. interrogators, and Trump’s nominee to head the C.I.A., Congressman Mike Pompeo, has defended and celebrated members of the agency who tortured prisoners. In addition, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, is one of 21 Republican lawmakers who voted against a 2015 amendment banning the use of torture, repeating a similar vote he made in 2005.

[cadaverdog]

The audience broke into applause when McCain got to the “we will not torture” part, and he later added, “My god, what does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people,” before declaring that the practice invalidates America’s moral superiority in the world, at which point the crowd applauded again.

Right before they burst out laughing.
BTW: I think Trump's comments about McCain were total bullshit and he should have apologized for making them long ago but McCain isn't in a position to warn President Elect Trump about doing anything.

[FORD]

The audience broke into applause when McCain got to the “we will not torture” part, and he later added, “My god, what does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people,” before declaring that the practice invalidates America’s moral superiority in the world, at which point the crowd applauded again.

Well, to be completely fair about it, McCain himself did inflict a form of torture on all Americans, which we unfortunately haven't been able to get rid of yet......

[DONNIEP]

First of all, Sarah Palin is hot as hell and her being kinda dingy makes her even hotter.

And thirdly, sometimes you gotta squeeze the shit out of a bad dude to get him to talk. No, that particular bad dude might not know anything about some impending major attack that only Jack Bauer can stop, but let's say he knows this guy who is somehow attached to Spooky Mahoof, the head head-chopper-offer for the local band of savages doing all sorts of nasty shit and who is usually close to one of the former generals of Saddam's army who is running things in the area and we'd like to send him a nice present via drone delivery, kinda like Amazon. Now, you gotta keep in mind that the guy we've snatched isn't a nice guy, he's running with the local savages and is therefore just as guilty as Spooky for those Shia heads in the street. Now, how do you get this guy to talk if you can't smack him around or maybe give him a ride on the old Waterboard? Sure, he's gonna tell you anything and everything but there are ways to verify or discredit what he's babbling on about when his swimming lesson is over. Or you can sit there and feed the guy Big Macs and Marlboros and ask nicely for the next six months and hope he decides he's kinda bored with raping and murdering and starts talking.

And I'm not saying we, as in the West, should even be there in Dirtville in the first place. But unless we just throw our hands up and say let em all kill each other then we're kinda gonna have to "be there" in some capacity and that means somebody is gonna have to try to wring some info out of the bad guys and these guys ain't gonna just start talking because they see an American or British flag on the uniform of the dude across the table in their little chit chat room.

And there's no moral equivalency bullshit here - the bad guys don't have any morals and if they capture a soldier from ANY opposing force they are going to set him on fire and chop his head off or worse. And no - waterboarding some guy ain't the same as what the bad guys are doing and whether we do it or not won't make one bit of difference to them.

[Nickdfresh]

Right before they burst out laughing.
BTW: I think Trump's comments about McCain were total bullshit and he should have apologized for making them long ago but McCain isn't in a position to warn President Elect Trump about doing anything.

The law is, and torturing is against it right now. Hopefully Drumpftard will renege on that campaign promise too, since torture doesn't work anyways...

[Nickdfresh]

First of all, Sarah Palin is hot as hell and her being kinda dingy makes her even hotter.

...

Oh dude, just stop. She's going sour fast!

And the Jack Bauer "Ticking Time Bomb" thing is bullshit and almost never happens, but don't worry, if he does have to torture someone to stop a ticking time bomb, he'll be in line for a pardon that no one would object too...

[DONNIEP]

Oh dude, just stop. She's going sour fast!

And the Jack Bauer "Ticking Time Bomb" thing is bullshit and almost never happens, but don't worry, if he does have to torture someone to stop a ticking time bomb, he'll be in line for a pardon that no one would object too...

Jack Bauer is a Bad Ass and he wouldn't ask for a pardon - he'd just go live in a trailer somewhere for a few years and somehow his secret agent spec ops ninja skills would never degrade from lack of training and he'd just hide out and wait for the next President to call him up to save the world. And the ending of that series sucked.

And are you sure about Sarah? I'm gonna have to check her out now to see if she's hit the wall. There might still be a few good years left in her

[DONNIEP]

Ok I checked her out. I say she's still hot but a leaked nude selfie would help us in making an official ruling.

[cadaverdog]

Hopefully Drumpftard will renege on that campaign promise too, since torture doesn't work anyways...

If torture doesn't work you ain't doing it right. I have zero sympathy for people who think beheading another human being is a good thing that will endear you to your chosen deity. If you catch one of these shitheads you should start torturing them immediately in order to ready them up for more torture later. They should spend the rest of their miserable lives being tortured IMO.

[Nickdfresh]

If torture doesn't work you ain't doing it right. I have zero sympathy for people who think beheading another human being is a good thing that will endear you to your chosen deity. If you catch one of these shitheads you should start torturing them immediately in order to ready them up for more torture later. They should spend the rest of their miserable lives being tortured IMO.

What do you hope to acheive by torture? We rarely catch them these days as they're mostly droned...

[FORD]

c-dog's idea of "torture" is wool socks that make his micro-penis itchy.

[cadaverdog]

c-dog's idea of "torture" is wool socks that make his micro-penis itchy.

Another supposed heterosexual male contemplating the size of another man's penis.What's up with that? Did you all turn gay after Hillary lost or were you just on the down low and decided it was a good time to come out of the closet?

[cadaverdog]

What do you hope to achieve by torture? We rarely catch them these days as they're mostly droned...

Why torture terrorists? Why not? If there's even a small chance we might retrieve information that might save the lives of our troops, our allies, and/ or innocent civilians I'm all for it.

[FORD]

Cheney's goons tortured Khalid Sheik Ron Jeremy at least 183 times. What useful information came from that?

Not a damn thing, that I can remember.

[DONNIEP]

Cheney's goons tortured Khalid Sheik Ron Jeremy at least 183 times. What useful information came from that?

Not a damn thing, that I can remember.

No offense Ford, but I'm pretty sure even you don't have access to what he blabbered on about. And in his case - who gives a shit if he gave up any useful info? They shoulda Fireboarded his ass.

[cadaverdog]

Cheney's goons tortured Khalid Sheik Ron Jeremy at least 183 times. What useful information came from that?

Not a damn thing, that I can remember.

Should we feel sorry for the sumbitch? I don't.

[FORD]

That's not the point. You insist there's a productive reason to torture some piece of shit for useful info. Yet here's an asshole, allegedly one of the founding members of "Al Qaeda" and presumably somebody who should have some valid info to give up. And yet torturing him repeatedly produced nothing of value.

However, if you really want to test this theory, let's torture Darth Cheney himself and see if he gives up any info.

[cadaverdog]

You insist there's a productive reason to torture some piece of shit for useful info.

I said if there's a chance torturing some piece of shit might save lives I'm all for it. You never know what you're gonna get until you try.

[FORD]

First of all, Sarah Palin is hot as hell and her being kinda dingy makes her even hotter.

[FORD]

Sunday, November 20, 2016
Consortium News
Installing a Torture Fan at CIA
Ray McGovern

--------------------------------------------------------------

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo, an open aficionado of torture practices used in the “war on terror,” to be CIA director shows that Trump was serious when he said he would support “waterboarding and much worse.”

Earlier, there had been a sliver of hope that that, while on the campaign trail, Trump was simply playing to the basest instincts of many Americans who have been brainwashed – by media, politicians, and the CIA itself – into believing that torture “works.” The hope was that the person whom Trump would appoint to head the agency would disabuse him regarding both the efficacy and the legality of torture.

But such advice is not likely from Pompeo, who has spoken out against the closing of CIA’s “black sites” used for torture and has criticized the requirement that interrogators adhere to anti-torture laws. He has also opposed closing the prison at Guantanamo, which has become infamous for torture and even murder.

After visiting Guantanamo three years ago, where many prisoners were on a hunger strike, Pompeo commented, “It looked to me like a lot of them had put on weight.”

There is little doubt that the champagne was flowing on Friday at CIA headquarters, from the seventh-floor executive offices down to the bowels of that building where torture practitioners have been shielded from accountability for 15 years in what amounts to the CIA’s internal “witness protection” program.

Indeed, relief over the Pompeo appointment came in the nick of time. For one fleeting moment earlier in the week, there was some panic at the hint that the International Criminal Court might show more courage than President Barack Obama in bringing torture perpetrators to justice.

That suggestion caused a moment of angst up and down the CIA’s ladder of authority, from supervisory felons, such as Director John Brennan and agency lawyers, down to the thugs hired to implement the amateurish but gruesome regime of torture depicted in gory detail in the Senate Intelligence Committee investigative report,

Published in December 2014 and based on original CIA documents, the report’s Executive Summary revealed a range of gruesome practices from the near-drowning sensation of water-boarding to the forcible rectal feeding of detainees.

Pompeo’s Defense

Pompeo responded to the findings by personally attacking Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein. He claimed she had “put American lives at risk” and he called CIA participants in the torture program “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game being played by the ACLU and Senator Feinstein.”

Pompeo seemed to be taking his cue from former chair of the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, who, right after the Senate report was released, boasted to me on live TV that he had been briefed on “90 to 95 percent” of the cruel practices laid bare in the Senate investigation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Clashing Face to Face on Torture.”

Torture also has its supporters in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm Pompeo as CIA director. At a Senate hearing on May 13, 2009, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, gave a tip of the cap to the Spanish Inquisition, which he cited as proof that torture could elicit some useful confessions (as it was used in the Fifteenth Century to detect “crypto Jews” and to burn several thousand heretics at the stake).

During a hearing on detainee interrogations, Sen. Graham said: “Let’s have both sides of the story here,” pointing out that there could be evidence that torture produced “good information.” Graham added, “I mean, one of the reasons these techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work.

On Wednesday, I was given nine minutes on radio to comment on the ICC’s tentative move to seek accountability for American torture practices. But Pompeo’s nomination on Friday is sure to dispel the brief moment of anxiety among the CIA’s torturers.

Congressman Pompeo is living proof that you can get all A’s at West Point, graduate first in your class, and still flunk the Constitution with its quaint Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Not knowing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights apparently makes you a good pick to head the CIA.

As member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Pompeo also was protective of the National Security Agency’s systematic abuse of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against illegal searches and seizures.

The selection of Pompeo came a few days after Vice President-elect Mike Pence told ABC that he would model his handling of the job after former Vice President Dick Cheney under President George W. Bush.

Though Pence may have meant Cheney’s assertive role and interaction with Congress, there was also Cheney’s advocacy for “regime change” wars and what the Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which earned Cheney the label from The Washington Post, “Vice President for Torture.”

Cheney has never been repentant about his aggressiveness in the “war on terror.” “I’d do it again in a minute,” he has declared.

Real Expert on Torture

Yet, even as Bush-Cheney apologists found excuses and euphemisms for torture, Gen. John Kimmons, head of Army Intelligence, told a Pentagon press conference on Sept. 6, 2006 – the same day he knew that President Bush planned to advertise the efficacy of his “alternate set of procedures” – that torture did not result in sound information.

Conceding past “transgressions and mistakes,” Kimmons insisted: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.” (Emphasis added)

That’s also what I learned as a young Army Intelligence officer 50 years ago. Cheney, Hoekstra, Graham, Trump, Pence and Pompeo can keep whistling on the dark side, but there is zero evidence to challenge what Gen. Kimmons had to guts to point out on that important day. The Senate Intelligence Committee report of December 2014 should have long since laid to rest the canard that torture “works.”

On a moral level, I also cannot quite fathom the attitude of Pence – who says, “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order” – tolerating torture and torture advocates. If memory serves, Jesus Christ was tortured to death.

Lest I seem to be coming down too hard on how so many fundamentalist Christians wink at (or applaud) torture, I must concede that – after 9/11 – the growing acceptance of practices like torture, previously widely condemned as totally unacceptable behavior, gained willing acceptance among many non-fundamentalist Christians, as well.

Many years ago when I studied ethics at Fordham, New York City’s Jesuit university, I was taught that there was one immutable category called “intrinsic evil,” which included slavery, rape and torture.

Somehow, torture slid out of that category when Fordham’s president, Rev. Joseph M. McShane, SJ, succumbed to the “celebrity virus,” and decided to ask alumnus (then-White House aide on counterterrorism and now CIA Director) John Brennan to give the Commencement address in 2012.

Brennan had publicly defended the practice of extraordinary rendition (aka kidnaping, most often for torture). Brennan was also on the routing for emails regarding CIA torture procedures. (It is important to note that, without a demonstrated “need to know,” no one is included as an addressee on such delicate matters.)

Adding insult to the injury of giving Brennan such an important invitation, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in “Humane Letters” (what might seem like a sick joke), as fellow honoree, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, applauded from the same platform.

When a number of graduating seniors objected to this profaning of their graduation, President McShane gave a glib gloss on torture and drone killings in these words: “We don’t live in a black and white world; we live in a gray world.”

(A group that I helped found, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, has written a number of Memoranda on torture and most recently on the CIA’s cover-up of torture, an issue completely neglected in the corporate media.)

© 2016 Consortium News

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[Seshmeister]

What do you hope to acheive by torture? We rarely catch them these days as they're mostly droned...

Executing suspects has replaced torture.

[Nickdfresh]

Executing suspects has replaced torture.

More video game-ish...