> 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.
Whereupon we now only have to worry about such "super torture" instead of the normal everday torture that everyone knows is just a fact of life. Ah, the subtle distinctions of 'sense' without the benefit of research (or even specialized knowledge); all too common I suppose, perhaps even 'common fact' in the soon-to-be-post-Bush era.
Marvin's sense isn't based on what he has read, or even what he's read about what the doctors that treated and rehabilitated McCain have said, but really just on his sense. And I think that's all we need to know, both about McCain and about Marvin.
I take back everything I said the other day about the power of the Internet. And perhaps add a note about this strawman, unless Marvin can cite a source where John McCain is presented as having been worked over on "the rack" or a "waterboard" in a "death camp" (instead of being beaten and tooth-broken while bound by rope with his arms behind him, thus leading directly [again, I'm sorry to say, according to the experts who are of course (at least this is my sense) just stooges in McCain's lifelong quest for power] to his current, permanent condition; and being forced to stand for days -- but that's not torture, Marvin and Bush both agree on that: in fact that's the International Coalition we've all been wondering about ... why it';s right there between Marvin and Bush, crossing borders together!) ... I'll be generous here and let you use any source that's either from McCain himself (he was interviewed extensively upon his return and many times since then) OR even a deluded journalist who has overstepped his bounds of the truth but nevertheless ought to be seen as a primary source; perhaps it was his sense, afterall. If you find one -- and you won't -- I'll happily rescind my charge of strawman.
> It's rarely presented to the American public this way ...
Yeah, but the Canadian public can see right through the smoke screen. And further, without even looking into it at all. Imagine that!
> and McCain HAS traded on that politically.
Wherein Marvin brings up an entirely different subject; politicians -- it's a "common fact of political life" don't you know? -- trade on everything in their past, as well as some things not in their past. I'm so glad to know that all this time I've been thinking that torture is just one of those things that McCain has been trading on without actually having experienced it.
Wow, you've really cleared up 30 years of misunderstanding on my part. Thanks.
> McCain, incidentally, was offered repatriation but declined to
> accept it for fear of contributing to enemy propaganda.
Marvin is now guilty of talking about a subject that he has no background on at all (instead of what we've been talking about already, heh); I hereby find you guilty of being a blowhard and sentence you to a week of hard labor reading about prisoner of war psychology, training, and resistance. Come back when you understand why it is that John McCain -- like so many others before and after him -- would do such a thing. The literature is available even to a Canadian. While you're at it, please find out why he was offered 'special deals' in the first place ...
> He'd earlier been shown on American TV confessing to war crimes ...
Which of course is never coerced; why I'm sure he called up his jailer and said: I'd love for you to arrange today for me to go in front of a TV crew so that I can get a few things off my chest I've been thinking about; I'm sure in the future, guys like Marvin will appreciate that I give even weight to my crimes as to my punishment. Look at the footage, he looks so happy, healthy, and, well, *un-tortured*. That's my sense anyway, isn't it yours? Oh wait, you've probably only heard that he did this and not actually seen the footage or even still photos from the event. And naturally: immediately upon his return, he really seemed to have grown fond of his captors; so much that in his US News & World Report interview in 1973, he had no trouble at all referring to his warm feelings about his former captors as he repeatedly called them casually "gooks" -- really, it's all sort of a misunderstanding!
> ... a decision he later regretted and attributed to his having come
> to a "breaking point".
Well, so long as we're all clear on what Marvin knows about torture and what he thinks of generally weak men who have no business trading on such an experience, especially since Marvin's sense is that it's made up for political gain in the first place and didn't actually happen.
> 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.
You set this tautology up, so of course you should bask in the glory of it; but I don't think that you need to have a binary here: war is bad; the Vietnam war was badder even; but that necessarily follows that your sense should lead you to question whether torture existed in Hanoi and whether John McCain experienced it first-hand?
Doug asks all the time: can't you hold two different thoughts in your head at once?
I suppose the answer is: no.
/jordan