I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.This is the video of his Senate speech.
Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.
Where I differ from McCain is in McCain's view that those who practiced torture under the Bush Administration should not be prosecuted. Torture was illegal before 9-11, it was illegal while the Bush Administration authorized the use of torture, and it has been illegal since then. McCain has also waffled in the past on whether it would be permissible for the CIA to torture people, although that 2008 position may have been part of his general whoring-out to the wingnuts during his failed campaign.
The use of torture was and is a crime, both under U.S. law and international law. It should be prosecuted. And some day, it will be.
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