[lbo-talk] McCain was not tortured in Vietnam

John Thornton jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net
Tue Oct 14 11:57:55 PDT 2008


James Heartfield wrote:
> Nguyen Tien Tran said: "We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded."
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/johnmccain/3194087/John-McCain-was-not-tortured-in-Vietnam-prison-guard-claims.html
>
> and see
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/uselections2008-johnmccain

This is nonsense. The evidence that McCain was tortured is at least as good and generally better than the evidence accepted every day that others are tortured. If you doubt McCain was tortured then you must also doubt prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were/are tortured.

Individuals and organizations that torture people seldom admit to torturing people so denials of torture from his captors hold very little water. McCain is a racist swine and unapologetic imperialist but if you want to cast doubt on the idea that he was tortured be prepared to apply that same standard of disbelief to others who make the same claim. While there is no doubt that horror stories were fabricated about the "evil communists" and readily believed by the west that hardly invalidates all or even most claims of torture from Vietnam POW's.

John Thornton



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