Candidate: McCain Doesn’t Understand Interrogation

Yes, you read that right. I did a double take myself. It wasn’t an copy editor’s boo boo. He actually said this during an interview on a radio talk show.

And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he (McCain) doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.

Are you kidding me? Enhanced interrogation is just a polite and fancy term for torture. And if anyone knows about torture, it’s McCain. Santorum has some serious balls to say this about a POW.

Torture doesn’t work. I never understood why people think it does. A person who is being tortured will say anything, anything to get it to stop. It doesn’t even have to be true. Just give them something vaguely similar to what they want to hear. An example is our favorite waterboarding participant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

“Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information,” McCain said.

Rick Santorum believes that the information did come from KSM. OK, fine. Believe whatever you want. Just don’t tell someone who was tortured for nearly 6 years that they don’t understand it. MSNBC reported the Facebook response by McCain’s aide, Mark Salter:

For pure, blind stupidity, nobody beats Santorum. In my 20 years in the Senate, I never met a dumber member, which he reminded me of today.

Message to Santorum: Not only is this claim complete lunacy, you look like a really insensitive blowhard when you say that about a POW.