McCain urges new interrogation specialty
COLUMBIA, S.C.
Republican White House hopeful John McCain said he wants “a crash program” in civilian and military schools that emphasizes language and creates a “new specialty in strategic interrogation” so the nation never feels the need for torture.
McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who suffered mistreatment, talked about the new proposal at a Columbia campaign stop Saturday.
McCain said he wanted to create an Army Advisory Corps of 20,000 soldiers to act as military advisers and a new Office of Strategic Services to fight terrorists. He said he wanted them to pursue “a crash program in civilian and military schools” to prepare more experienced speakers in strategically important languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and others, and to “create a new specialty in strategic interrogation — a new, a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to feel motivated to torture anyone ever again.”
When asked if he knew whether U.S. forces had engaged in torture in the past, the Arizona senator said he didn’t.
“I do not know whether they’ve been involved in torture because I don’t have that kind of information,” McCain said. “I do know that when tapes are destroyed of interrogations, it contributes enormously to the cynicism, the skepticism, and also is further damaging to the image of the United States of America in the world.”
The CIA recently acknowledged that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes made three years earlier of the CIA’s interrogations of two terror suspects. The tapes were made to document how CIA officers used new, harsh questioning techniques approved by the White House to force recalcitrant prisoners to talk.
Intelligence officials have said the methods that were shown on the videotapes included waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that causes the sensation of drowning and is banned by the Pentagon.
McCain also said he met with a “high ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq” who told him that post-invasion lawlessness and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib helped recruit insurgents. The latter was “a great recruitment tool,” McCain said. “He said it and I believe it.”
He also said he’d go after terrorists with a new military force. “I’ll set up a new agency patterned after the old Office of Strategic Services that will be a small, nimble, can-do organization that will fight” terrorist anywhere in the world and on the Internet, McCain said.
Wild Thing’s comment……..
So, is this supposed to be a cadre of psychologists who will befriend the terrorists for 6 months to find out that a nuclear bomb went off 5 months and 28 days ago?
Their propaganda has convinced millions via the Net and disinformation meeted out to the MSM that has fed the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and recruited thousands to their cause by just outright lying.
PLEASE remind the good senator that Islamofascists don’t have to play by the rules, fight by the rules, slit throats by rules, behead infidels by rules or fight a jihad islamo holy war by rules…. WTF? Am I the only right wing neo-con Christian Crusader that understands this? Peace On Earth ?
Let’s see, that’s 20,000 more Jim McDermott’s on the taxpayer dole at the behest of Comrade McCain.
I’m asking John McCain. Who violated the military Code of Conduct and willfully collaborated with the Vietnamese, Soviets, and Cubans? Why is John McCain hugging Bui Tin as if he were a long lost brother.
John McCain, why are you collaborating with the enemy….now?
Increasing the capabilities of our military intelligence by 20,000 is fine with me but not by 20,000 psychologists or 20,000 lawyers to protect and aid those raghead sons of bitches.
This is another reason why I won’t vote for McCain. I am surprised he doesn’t want first, to have a 100 man commission study the interogation currently used, then create another bloated bureacracy to oversee the interogation of Terrorists.
As I have said before the left believe that if we start getting tough with them it will just piss them off. What don’t these morons understand.
We just shut down a huge operation in Afghanistan, the surge is working, and they are worried we might really make the mad. So what, when they get made the make dumb mistakes and that makes it easier to kill them. But that is what the left doesn’t want us to do and that is win.
I think McCain’s brain has finally self-destructed and he is now a suffering liberal.
Islamofacists don’t play by any rules, but we HAVE to or they’ll leave our kids in danger without any protection or financing. You simply CANNOT win a war that way.
And this idea of John McCain is just plain dumb. No one is going to want to get touchy feely with the terrorists and the terrorists aren’t going to divulge anything important.
Dumb-Dumb-Dumb!
Torture,is?? well to me it’s removing finger
nails and toe nails with plyers.Pulling or
drilling on teeth with out pain killer.using
a hose down the throat or up from the bottom and turn the water on full, white hot rod on various
locations of the body,removing fingers or toes.
One could go on but why. Water bording is tough but not anywhere near the above…
From what I understand, the agents who administer the water boarding have had it done to them during training. Much like a cop that’s required to be tazered or hit with pepper spray before they’re certified to use it.
McCain is unstable. One of his few consistancies is to make government larger and more intrusive. His idea of an Army Advisory Corps and OSS is presently alive and well in the Army Special Forces and Civil Action units. McCain’s ideas would only add non SF qualiied people to these extremely successful units and tie them down with legal red tape.
Let the people in the field decide on interrogation neccessities. Any blueprint of interrogation techniques and restrictions drawn up by politicians and lawyers will hamper military efforts and cause friendly casualties.
I think McCain may know this, but he is no longer a military man. He is now a consummate politician and big government guy.
I respect and thank John McCain for his military service to the country and the hardships that he endured. However, he and those who agree with him about the United States under George Bush being torturers has disproportionately done more damage to the country than the alleged problem they describe.
Why are they so silent and don’t condemn the real torturers, the Islamofascists, instead of destroying their own country? Could it be just politics? How disloyal of them.
McCain did endure torture and saw fellow POW’s beat beyond recognition and even killed, so I understand his repulsion of any harsh treatment of prisoners. But, as far as I know, not one bone has been broken or one prisoner has been beaten.
One of the basis for doing away with the harsh treatment of those known to have information is the hope that any American POW’s will be humanly treated. So far, all GI’s captured in Iraq have been brutally murdered. Some were only identifiable though DNA. I’m sorry but you don’t treat a sub-human animal with dignity and respect.
Darth, yes he is preferrring to talk to them then do anything to else to get information out of them. This is very dangerous for our side I think and if he was President saying this it to me would be extremely dangerous to let the terrorists know we will treat them with kid gloves.
Jack, yep, I always get nervous when our politicians talk about yet another forcus group or what McCain is discussing he would do. Not good, not good at all.
Mark, I agree, why or why can’t politicians leave our military alone. We have such an awesome military and they know exactly what needs to be done and how much. I trust them, I just wish people like McCain and others would keep their noses out of it.
Lynn, I agree, the enemy does not play by any rules. This is insane to tell our military how to run a war. Insane.
Tincan Sailor, Ditto from me.
Bob I have been told that too. Special Forces for one knows first hand about this.
Tom….”Let the people in the field decide on interrogation neccessities”….I agree completely.
Les, I agree, McCain is a war hero and I respect him for his service to our country.
But he is no longer in chagre of our military and neither are these other politicans and for me I want all of this left up to our military and not one single politician to be involved at all. By their being in it they always turn it into something political. grrr
Bob, that’s is so true. It is not as though we are teaching our enemy how to treat our soldiers when they are prisoners. They go right to the beheading and cut up a person’s body.