McCain Urges New Interrogation Specialty

[sabra]

Source: AP

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Republican White House hopeful John McCain said he wants "a crash program" in civilian and military schools that emphasizes language and creates a "new specialty in strategic interrogation" so the nation never feels the need for torture.

McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who suffered mistreatment, talked about the new proposal at a Columbia campaign stop Saturday.

McCain said he wanted to create an Army Advisory Corps of 20,000 soldiers to act as military advisers and a new Office of Strategic Services to fight terrorists. He said he wanted them to pursue "a crash program in civilian and military schools" to prepare more experienced speakers in strategically important languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and others, and to "create a new specialty in strategic interrogation — a new, a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to feel motivated to torture anyone ever again."

When asked if he knew whether U.S. forces had engaged in torture in the past, the Arizona senator said he didn't.

"I do not know whether they've been involved in torture because I don't have that kind of information," McCain said. "I do know that when tapes are destroyed of interrogations, it contributes enormously to the cynicism, the skepticism, and also is further damaging to the image of the United States of America in the world."

...

McCain also said he met with a "high ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq" who told him that post-invasion lawlessness and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib helped recruit insurgents. The latter was "a great recruitment tool," McCain said. "He said it and I believe it."



Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6SZlJHXgjMOdFhCzXpbioaeXCuQD8TI72K00

[dantyrant]

1. McCain should take a nap.

He's starting to lose it, I think.

[iamjoy]

2. What's Wrong With It

I think we need to train our military to better deal with the world as it is today, not as it was 50 years ago.

[tchunter]

4. i actually think what he is proposing is reasonable...

he knows first hand the experience of being a POW; i respect his constantly moral stand on the issue

[PSPS]

3. Here's a more direct and effective approach: Lock up the torturers and throw away the key.

We should treat these people no differently than we did the Nazis at Nuremburg.

[fshrink]

5. Use of torture

is always the sign that you are losing. The surest sign that your intelligence organization is not working. Or that the top of the administration is rotten. And typically both. It is only a symptom that suggests the presence of, but does not define, the illness.

[EFerrari]

6. McCain is right on this one. And remember the insurgency did take off

AFTER Abu Graib.

[bemildred]

7. Professional torturers with fancy jargon are still torturers.

Throw some of the fuckers in jail for a while and you will do more good than any amount of this sort of bullshit.