| CA: do NOT put blockquotes into the title bar. That screws our formatting big-time. Please do not do that. |
Sen. John McCain claimed Wednesday that the U.S. is still torturing terrorist detainees, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits with European leaders to assure them that the practice is banned under U.S. law.
"We've got to stop this torture," McCain told radio host Don Imus. "If you torture somebody, they're going to tell you what they think you want to know in order to make the pain stop," he complained.
| Pardon me, Senator, but do you have any proof that this is going on today? I realize it's delicate, I realize that you don't want to reveal classified information, but putting some proof on the table -- something other what comes out of the al-Q training manual -- would be helpful. Everyone's talking about it occurring, but no one's pointing to any current inmate and saying, "him! He got tortured! There are the burn marks, there's where the clips for the electrodes went! See? See!!??!!" |
The Republican maverick said the U.S. can't win the propaganda war "if people believe throughout the world that you are practicing cruel, inhuman, degrading mistreatment or torture on the people that you capture."
"Right now," McCain complained, "we have prisons, apparently, set up in different places in the world where we're keeping people for years."
His comments come as Dr. Rice meets with European leaders to assure them that claims about ongoing torture are baseless. "The United States does not condone torture," she told a German audience on Tuesday. "It is against U.S. law to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture. And it is also against U.S. international obligations and the President has made it very clear that U.S. personnel will operate within U.S. law and within our international obligations."
Rice also indicated, however, that interrogations conducted in the foreign prisons referenced by McCain have been productive, telling reporters, "The intelligence we gathered has helped to stop terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe - as well as in the United States and other countries." |