Not Tortured

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Not Tortured
50
Tue, 10-14-2008 - 12:21am

Maybe he was merely waterboarded (not considered torture now days) or maybe he was just creatively questioned, but his guard says he was not tortured (note: did the guard read the Gonzales and Yoo memos?).


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/uselections2008-johnmccain


McCain was not tortured, PoW guard claims


  • John Hooper in Rome
  • The Guardian,
  • Tuesday October 14 2008

    The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his captivity in North Vietnam, the chief prison guard of the jail in which he was held has claimed.


    In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Nguyen Tien Tran acknowledged that conditions in the prison were "tough, though not inhuman". But, he added: "We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded."


    McCain, who fell into enemy hands after his plane was shot down in 1967, has frequently referred to being tortured and has cited his experiences as a reason for vigorously opposing the endorsement by the Bush administration of the use of techniques such as "water-boarding" on terrorist suspects.


    Shortly after his release in 1973 McCain told US News & World Report that his prison guards had beaten him "from pillar to post". After being worked over at intervals for four days, he said, he had become suicidal and agreed to sign a "confession" admitting to war crimes.


    In his 1999 autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, he described how after his capture he was subjected to inhuman treatment in an effort to force him to disclose his ship's name, squadron number and the target of his final mission. He was threatened with the withdrawal of medical assistance and, while still suffering from his crash injuries, his guards "knocked me around a little".


    For his service in Vietnam and his actions as a POW, McCain was awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Navy Commendation Medal and the Purple Heart.


    Tran, now 75, said McCain reached Hanoi with the worst injuries he had seen in a downed pilot. But he denied torturing him, saying it was his mission to ensure that McCain survived. As the son of the US naval commander in Vietnam, he offered a potential valuable propaganda weapon.


    However, recommending McCain for a medal after the war, his former cellmate, the much-decorated Colonel George Day, said the admiral's son had forced his interrogators to "drug him and torture him to get any cooperation", according to a letter in the US National Archives cited earlier this year by the Washington Post. Day said McCain suffered "torturous abuse".


    Tran told Corriere that McCain was sent to hospital the day after he was brought to Hanoi and stayed there for a month. "I never lost him from sight. I was frightened a doctor or nurse might do him harm."


    Tran dismissed as "absolutely impossible" perhaps the most famous story from McCain's autobiography: that one Christmas, a guard traced a cross in the mud in front of him. "My men were all communists and atheists," he said.


    As to why McCain, then 36, left North Vietnam with prematurely grey hair, Tran denied it was because of mistreatment. "It's that in prison you think too much.">>>


  • Sopal

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    iVillage Member
    Registered: 10-08-2008
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 1:13pm
    In reading and hearing about torture, which I whole-heartedly detest including what my own government has done, sometimes I think the worst torture that McCain and his fellow POWs may have experienced was living rather than dying.
    iVillage Member
    Registered: 03-19-2003
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 1:15pm

    LOL and yet you had time to think about and respond to two of my posts ;-)


    it bothers me less about McCain than it does the other PsOW

    Photobucket

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 03-19-2003
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 1:16pm
    and now to be 'outed' as liars by a man who abused them.

    Photobucket

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 10-08-2008
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 1:19pm
    Agree with you there, also.
    iVillage Member
    Registered: 06-10-2003
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 1:42pm

    You are not seriously going to take the word of former prison guard?

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 10-12-2008
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 6:09pm
    What a total waste of thread space.

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 10-14-2008
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 6:19pm
    Well, then - if you consider it a "total waste of thread-space," you probably know what to do, right: don't respond and keep bumping it back up to the top.

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 09-04-2008
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 6:25pm

    .....so do you believe Casey Anthony too?

    iVillage Member
    Registered: 03-25-2007
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 7:30pm
    I in no way equate McCain to Casey Anthony, OJ, Michael Jackson, or Scott Peterson.

    Sopal

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    iVillage Member
    Registered: 04-04-2003
    In reply to: sopall1953
    Tue, 10-14-2008 - 7:44pm

    Well...I have trouble believing the chief prison guard Nguyen Tien Tran.