Opinion: Ex-POW McCain denounces torture as U.S. policy

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Judge Michael Mukasey seems to be well along the path to Senate confirmation as attorney general despite his refusal to declare waterboarding a form of torture.

But, campaigning in Iowa today, former POW John McCain says he intends to continue talking about the procedure, which involves placing a prisoner on his back, head down on an inverted board, covering his face with a wet towel and pouring water on him. It is said to produce the intense sensation of drowning.

At an Iowa Falls event, The Times’ Aaron Zitner heard the Arizona senator criticize Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani for saying, in McCain’s words, that waterboarding could be used under certain circumstances. ‘Now, my friends,’ McCain said in his familiar speech pattern, ‘waterboarding is torture . . . No mistake about that.’

He also said, ‘We have to have the moral high ground,’ and said use of waterboarding hurts the United States’ reputation worldwide. The procedure is said to have been used a handful of times on hardened Al Qaeda prisoners.

Later in a short news conference, McCain vowed to continue discussing the issue, which has the not coincidental side effect of underlining the candidate’s military and war experience and six years of sacrifice as a prisoner. McCain and California Rep. Duncan Hunter are the only GOP candidates with wartime military experience.

Asked by one reporter about Giuliani mocking sleep deprivation as a harsh interrogation technique and comparing it to running for president, McCain referenced a fellow Vietnam POW who was chained to a stool for 10 days and then unchained for one day and then chained again for 10 more days, according to the senator.

‘Ask him,’ McCain demanded, ‘if that has any relation to running for president.’

-- Andrew Malcolm