ossobuco wrote:I don't get that waterboarding training, however difficult, equates with real life prisoner fear going into and during waterboarding, also within context of an array of other interrogations. Kind of like practicing kissing from a cartoon how-to site. Not to belittle the training, but real fear is not the same, however calibrated.
To equate scaring the bejeebers out of somebody (or offending, embarassing, ridiculing, placing in uncomfortable/boring environments, etc.) without inflicting severe pain or doing actual harm as being no different from inflicting intractable pain, maiming, mutilation, injury, especially irreversible injury, etc. is subject to reasonable debate, however.
When it comes to national security and possibly the safety/lives of hundreds or thousands of people at stake, there is room to discuss what can be acceptable or not acceptable or more precisely, what is extreme and what is not extreme. John McCain has been heavily criticized for stating that he would remove known terrorists from military custody and bring them to the USA where they would have the same rights and protections as US citizens, meaning they could easily be turned loose on the whim of judge or a technicality. When he joined with the liberals to declare that any aggressive interrogation method constituted torture, he was even more severely criticized, especially by those who do see a distinction between scaring somebody and actually inflicting physical damage to somebody.
As McCain has experienced real torture first hand, it was felt he of all people should know the difference; therefore he was seen as pandering to the Left for political advantage.
Now having to reinvent himself to be acceptable to a broad and widely diverse conservative electorate, he is in something of a quandary. He's damned by somebody no matter what he decides.
