What The Hell Does John McCain Know About Torture Anyway?

Rick Santorum seems intent on taking the idiot crown away from Michele Bachmann among Republican presidential candidates. After John McCain stated that the waterboarding (aka torture) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not a factor in the killing of Osama bin Laden, Santorum had this to say:

Everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation. And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden.

What? Can Santorum be a bigger dick than we suspected? I’m not a McCain fan but I am willing to say that when it comes to interrogation techniques, listening to a man who was tortured for 5 1/2 years at the hands of North Vietnamese would not be the dumbest thing one can do. Most of us can agree that McCain does not understand how a lot of things works but claiming that he “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works‘ is inane.

In and op-ed piece in the Washington Post, McCain writes that he spoke to CIA director Leon Panetta who informed him that:

The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

But to stooges like Rick Santorum that is all meaningless compared to “everything [he's] read” at the Drudge Report, Washington Times or whichever other right-wing rag the man is reading.

Republicans had it tough enough trying to keep loony teabaggers reasonably happy by acquiescing to their ludicrous demands on fiscal matters but now they have to contend with members of their party attacking their own. Saint Ronny would be so unhappy.

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