> I thought I remembered reading that a Spanish psychologist who
> interviewed McCain claimed while he was a prisoner claimed McCain hadn't
> been tortured.
> I have no idea the extent or reality of his torture and as far as I can
> tell it will always be unknowable.
> I simply take McCain, or any other crime victim, at his word unless
> there is serious contradictory evidence that suggests otherwise.
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See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031003141_pf.html.
No more or less reliable an account than from Jordan's unimpeachable American sources.
It does appear, as you say, that "the extent or reality of his torture...will always be unknowable."
My own sense is that McCain was roughed up and humiliated by his guards in a way that meets the definition of torture in the UN and other conventions - that's a common fact of prison life and POW camps - but that his wartime injuries were not the result of the kind of systematic and brutal torture associated with the rack and other devices (including the waterboard) and death camps. It's rarely presented to the American public this way, however, and McCain HAS traded on that politically.
McCain, incidentally, was offered repatriation but declined to accept it for fear of contributing to enemy propaganda. He'd earlier been shown on American TV confessing to war crimes, a decision he later regretted and attributed to his having come to a "breaking point". I've seen no reference that McCain himself described having reached that state because of torture by his captors rather than his primitive prison conditions, but it's quite possible ha has done so. I've only done some cursory googling on the subject.
In any case, my point remains that tears are invariably shed - including, to my great surprise, on this list - over McCain's history in Vietnam after he was shot down, and not over what he and his fellow "heroes" in the Hanoi Hilton were doing there before.