Some serious thoughts on the issue from writer/columnist Cathy Young:
I fully agree with John Cole: this is an outrage. Some in the “anti-anti-torture” contingent are using the fact that John McCain broke under torture when held captive by the North Vietnamese to rebut McCain’s own anti-torture argument — ostensibly as a demonstration that “torture works,” but also, I suspect, to subtly impugn the Senator’s character. Either way, it’s repulsive, and as Cole rightly points out, it’s also nonsensical: what McCain gave his captors was some totally useless information (e.g. the name of the ship he had served on) and a signed “confession” to war crimes.
Read it in full — since it’s full of content.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.