John McCain clearly does not have the support — FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS, EVEN BEFORE THIS POSITION HE MAINTAINED WHICH ENCOURAGES ONGOING MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS, which I’ll get to in a moment here — of the Right, nor was a successful Republican candidate for the Presidency accordingly. He landed more votes than most of us anticipated he would BECAUSE most of us voting Republicans opted to “hold our noses and vote” to support the Republican Party (and despite all of this, McCain still managed to do surprisingly well in the past election, and, Obama DID NOT “win by a landslide” but by a margin (note that more people DIDN’T VOTE AT ALL than voted for Obama, and he won not by a wide margin but by a fraction of votes against an unpopular Republican candidate amidst a Party reorganizing against tough issues).

All that being what it was, the issue of “waterboarding” is not fully represented by McCain in that opinion of his, and, as most people past an age of impressionability can readily recognize, McCain does not author an objective view about prisoner of war issues and experiences: since he was a POW, he experienced more suffering and humiliation than most of us can easily imagine nor want to, and, a great deal of room is given to John McCain for those experiences and that suffering. REASONABLE PEOPLE don’t take him to great task in these regards since there is a great deal of compassion for the suffering he survived and has had to live with in ongoing memories in the rest of his life.

BUT his perspective about “waterboarding” as a generalization is not necessarily sound, since his perspectives are entirely tainted by a cruel and unusually sadistic enemy who inflicted great suffering upon the man. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE U.S. DOES TO ENEMY-COMBATANTS.

If you have a rotten apple and then a fresh apple, you can reasonably say that you have “apples” just as you can have waterboarding as used for torture in John McCain’s perceptions and then compare that to waterboarding as used for interrogation in an entirely different scenario and as an application of interrogation, not as an experience of torture.

As the U.S. used waterboarding FOR INTERROGATION PURPOSES, it was highly monitored, used exceptionally sparingly (two or three terrorists held captive at Guantanamo experienced it), physicians were present, conditions were highly regulated and purposed and the purpose was interrogation, not “torture” as John McCain knows torture to be. In McCain’s frame of reference — as a POW in a Southeast Asian/Communist prison camp — he was tortured as other POWs were tortured and the use of waterboarding in those conditions does not represent the same conditions nor intents as used by the U.S. at Guatanamo.

It is NOT an equivalency to attempt to associate one application type with the other, in other words. The “apples” are different, one rotten and disgusting, the other fresh and useful.

IN THE CONDITIONS USED by the U.S., then, the process was deemed NOT TO BE ILLEGAL and was used with the approval of members of Congress, the Democrats included.

The Democrats are today using this pitiful, disgusting line of hysteria to attempt to ruin the credibility of the United States and to encourage a disintegration of our nation’s security and intelligence capabilities. Which is, actually, far more torturous to the American public and to our nation that was a successful interrogation method used against three/two exeptionally dangerous individuals in Guantanamo.

Please also note that the Guantanamo “enemy combatants” have enjoyed year-round clean living conditions, ongoing weekly medical and dental examinations and treatments as needed, entertainment daily, exercise daily, religious freedoms to study, interact and practice their daily religious regiments, clean clothing, bathing facilities…conditions for many of them that are far nicer than they would have and have known in their own lives otherwise. And these are people who remain today dedicated to taking the lives with great depravity of Americans.

We ALL, as Republicans, are familiar with John McCain’s personality and his inexactness at times that require one to be exact. He is being exact within the scope of his personal experiences as to waterboarding, which is not to say that he was/is being exact about waterboarding in the same context and process as used by the U.S.

I agree that waterboarding is NOT “torture” as it has been used by the U.S. against terrorists held captive, as used as a method of enhanced interrogation.

However, I accept McCain’s opinion as it references his PAST EXPERIENCES of being subjected to inhumane sadism at the hands of the enemy.

Not the same things…

So I repeat: waterboarding, as with other techniques of enhanced interrogation, was used AS A LEGAL, predetermined to be legal, process IN THE CONDITIONS IT WAS USED by the U.S. Key members of Congress were aware before these were used and agreed they should be used, with a few (Democrat) members of Congress asking if there could, actually, be “more done” to increase the pressure of interrogation, deeming as they did waterboarding to not be pressure enough.

So the climate today is not one ACTUALLY about waterboarding, it is about Democrats today exercising the height of irresponsibility about our U.S. national security and using this issue to attempt to further denigrate the U.S.

And even John McCain admits that he was “broken” (or, otherwise, compromised) by and during his POW experience.

Thanks for writing to this site all the way from Taipei, “tommy”.

But it was Mr. John McCain who broke a sweat in 2007. McCain claimed that Japanese had been hanged to death for torturing Americans with waterboarding. ‘GOP Candidate Says There Should Be “Little Doubt” It Is Torture’