McCain: Bush Officials Lied When Said Waterboarding Gave Us Useful Information
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
TANTAROS: "All right, senator, when Trump said that, at the debate, I saw my Twitter feed just light up. A lot of people seem to like his comments. and, if you remember, Megyn Kelly sat down with James Mitchell, who interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. One of the things Mitchell told her during the interrogation process when they were waterboarding him, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said your people will turn on you. your country turn on you. And they will not like it and they will turn on you. Almost like he knew the public may have adverse reaction to it, Stephanopoulous point of view. Who is right about waterboarding?"
MCCAIN: "Well if you believe the Geneva Conventions which prohibit it, if you believe the 93-3 vote we took in the Senate prohibiting waterboarding and whatever other forms of torture I think all of us admire general David Petraeus. Let me give you his quote. Our nation has paid a high price in recent decades for the information gained by the use of techniques beyond those in, beyond those in the field. What prohibits it. And in my view, that price far outweighed value of the information gained through the use of techniques beyond those in the manual. What he is saying is, Abu Ghraib shocked the world. Abu Ghraib was a great propaganda tool for them. We tried Japanese generals and hung them for war crimes. One of the crimes was waterboarding. and finally, I guarantee you, that when someone is subjected to torture and by the way, this is a near-death experience, then they will tell that person who is administering that anything they want to hear. And when someone says it led to Osama bin Laden, they're lying. And so, what we got was a whole lot of bad information from these people who just told whatever they thought the intear bate tore wanted to -- interrogator wanted to hear. are we going to subject people to torture? is that what the united states is all about? i tell you what General Petraeus told me this morning, the best way of to get information be a friend of that prisoner, develop relationship over time. That is what works."
TANTAROS: "Do you believe that administration officials in the Bush administration, former attorney general, do you believe they are lying?"
MCCAIN: "No, I believe they are in violation of the law. They're in violation of the Geneva Conventions and i believe that they're lying when they said they got useful information. In fact I know they're lying when they are saying that they didn't. They got a whole lot of information that was totally false, because when you torture somebody -- but major thing is, do we want to resort to doing things that our enemies do? Do we want to be on the same plain as those people chopping off heads?"
