Sen. John McCain joined the ladies of Fox News' Outnumbered TV show this morning and offered up a devastating rebuke of Trump's call for legalizing waterboarding and much worse, and former Bush officials who said we got actionable intelligence from torture.
Do we want a President who will violate the law?”
Andrea Tantaros, played the torture loving Conservative, viewed anyone against torture as the "Stephanopoulos view," constantly asked if the Bush officials were liars.
McCain unequivocally said "yes," they were lying about the results they received from torturing prisoners and then explained why Abu Ghraib was a horrible moment and an extremist recruitment story.
McCain then invoked the Most Admired Man in Conservative Circles, Gen. Petraeus, who also has issued a powerful rebuke of torture.
McCain was attacked by Trump weeks ago as not being a war hero because the AZ Senator was a Lindsey Graham supporter, but he had all the facts on his side when discussing this issue.
According to McCain, the information gathered by subjecting suspects to simulated drowning is often flat-out inaccurate.
“They got a whole lot of information that was totally false,” the Arizona senator said of the use of waterboarding during George W. Bush’s administration.
“Do we want to resort to doing things that our enemies do? Do we want to be on the same plane as those people chopping off heads?” he continued.
I posted over four minutes of McCain, but couldn't transcribe it all.
Watch it all the same.
Here's more of the transcript:
Asked about waterboarding...McCain said:
"Well, if you believe the Geneva convention, which prohibits it, if you believe the 93-3 vote we took in the Senate, which prohibiting waterboarding and other forms of torture...all of us admire general David Petraeus. Let me give you his quote -- "our nation has paid a high price in recent decades for the information gained by the use of techniques beyond those in the field manual which prohibits it and in my view the price paid fair outweighed the value of the information gained through the use of techniques beyond those in the manual."
Abu Graib shocked the world, Abu Graib was a great propaganda tool for them. We tried Japanese generals and hung them for war crimes...one of the crimes is waterboarding.
When someone is subjected to torture, and by the way, this is a near death experience, they will tell that person who is administering that anything they want to hear.
When someone says it led to Osama Bin Ladin, they are lying. What we got was a whole lot of bad information from these people who just told whatever they told the interrogator wanted to hear
Second of all, are we going to subject people to torture? Is that what the US is all about? And I'll tell you what General Petraeus told me this morning - "the best way to get information is be a friend of that prisoner. Develop a relationship over time. That's what works."
When asked about the bush administration's "truthfulness" McCain said:
"No, I believe they are in violation of the law, in violation of the Geneva Convention. I believe they are lying about getting useful information.
They got a whole lot of information that was totally false. Because when you torture someone, the major thing is, do we want to resort to things that our enemies do? Do we want to be on the same plane as people that are chopping off peoples heads?
Question about Michael Mukasey...is he a liar?
McCain said: "Yes, I know that he is. Even if we had gotten useful information, the propaganda and the image and the behavior of the greatest nation on earth from torturing people is not what we want and it helps the enemy."
"I prefer to believe the military leaders."
