McCain Denies Facts of Waterboarding

Sen. John McCain inserted himself into the debate over torture this week, but was corrected by the former Attorney General less than 24 hours for his claim that waterboarding was not useful in finding Bin Laden. In 2003, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, held at secret CIA prisons and waterboarded. Critics called it torture, but some supporters point out that its little different from the dunking that goes on at a pool by kids. Obama outlawed the practice when he took office, but that was before anyone realized it provided key information in finding Bin Laden. Even today, however, spin masters continue to deny its role, and McCain made his comments only after speaking with Leon Pannetta (Obama's Director of National Intelligence) instead of the men involved when the information was actually obtained.

McCain was answering statements from an array of former Bush administration officials (from Vice President Dick Cheney to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to John Yoo, the Justice Department official who penned the memo giving legal cover to interrogation practices considered illegal the world over) who have come forward to frame the killing of Osama bin Laden as a natural result of their policy of "enhanced interrogations."

"Sunday's success also vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to bin Laden's door," Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that appeared less than 72 hours after bin Laden was killed.

The speed with which members of the former administration took credit surprised some observers, like Hofstra University presidential scholar Meena Bose. "It reflects how important it [the interrogation program] was to the Bush administration," she said.

But what's really at stake in the debate?

Not American policy. Days after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order resetting U.S. interrogation policy. He has been criticized by supporters of the Bush approach for limiting interrogations to the rules outlined in the Army field guide, but his base would revolt if he restored "enhanced interrogations."

"I don't think the death of bin Laden reopens the debate about what constitutes torture," Bose said.

The public may not agree. In an AP-Gfk poll conducted shortly after the killing of bin Laden, a clear majority of Americans - 60 percent - said the use of torture can sometimes or often be justified. (That's up from 52 percent in January 2010.) The poll was conducted from May 5-9, just as the torture debate was taking shape. As the facts of this story become better known, that number is likely to increase. At the time of writing, most liberal bloggers continue to publish stories denying any link between enhanced interrogations and catching Bin Laden, but the facts tell a different story and won't go away. See Chick's THE CHOICE.