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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2008 / Whatever You Do, Don’t Say “Torture”

Whatever You Do, Don’t Say “Torture”

by John Cole|  September 3, 200812:39 pm| 13 Comments

This post is in: Election 2008, Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?

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I have to admit, it was pretty funny (and depressing) listening to Max Headroom President Bush and Fred Thompson use every word in the vocabulary to describe John McCain’s experiences while being tortured in Viet Nam except the word torture, but this part just of Thompson’s snoozer made me laugh, because it was clear they had run out of euphemisms:

Over four days, every two to three hours, the beatings resumed. During one especially fierce beating, he fell, again breaking his arm. John was beaten for communicating with other prisoners. He was beaten for not communicating with so-called peace delegations. He was beaten for not giving information during interrogations.

And John McCain is going to be beaten on November 4th.

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Reader Interactions

13Comments

  1. 1.

    Noah

    September 3, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Dude, nobody showed up at the Republican Convention!

  2. 2.

    Punchy

    September 3, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    More power to you mooks who can watch this stuff. I cant.

    I fully expect McCane to give his acceptance speech inside of a bamboo cage shirtless and with fake whip marks….

  3. 3.

    gbear

    September 3, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Blucher!

  4. 4.

    cleek

    September 3, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    i like how they keep saying the (non-)torture didn’t break his spirit and how that proves how much of a man he is, yadayadayada.

    tone thing you’ll never hear from the GOP: McCain actually did break. he signed confessions which said he was a war criminal. he made propaganda films for the enemy. he broke.

    hell, i’d break too. but i wouldn’t go around pretending i didn’t.

  5. 5.

    jake

    September 3, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    And John McCain is going to be beaten on November 4th.

    Thanks John, really. Nothing wakes you up like a few ounces of Sprite through the old sinuses.

  6. 6.

    gbear

    September 3, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    Man, I hate your servers.

  7. 7.

    Tax Analyst

    September 3, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    I fully expect McCane to give his acceptance speech inside of a bamboo cage shirtless and with fake whip marks….

    Maybe he can have Jeri Thompson beat him…emphasize the “women have power in our party” theme…or something.

    Hell, why go with surrogates? Have Sarah Palin beat him…she could wear a hunter’s outfit and snarl/sneer at him while she’s doing it.

  8. 8.

    mapaghimagsik

    September 3, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    I really hope come November 5th, I can see this linked back. I’d like to think the electorate is tired of being lied to, but I think most of the electorate has some sort of weird Stockholm Syndrome, and they can’t love the candidate unless they’re getting abused.

  9. 9.

    Dave in ME

    September 3, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    And John McCain is going to be beaten on November 4th.

    Here let me fix that for you:
    And John McCain is going to have his pasty ass beaten to a freaking pulp on November 4th, reminiscent of Mondale in 1984.

    Fixed!

  10. 10.

    horatius

    September 3, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Hell. Just a few beatings and Mccain screams torture? Ask Donald Rumsfeld what torture really is. Mccain is a whiner.

  11. 11.

    mellowjohn

    September 3, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    let’s remember: it’s not torture when we do it.

  12. 12.

    freelancer

    September 4, 2008 at 4:08 am

    PS [pre-script] John, love your site, and I always look forward to your, and your contributors’ opinions, but DOOD!, look into another host, please. Your readership can only go up from here, and those who subscribe are disappointed when we have the far-left (OMG! I used the same phrase O’Reilly did?!) and the oblivious centrist, framer BS-er, but nothing in between. When WordPress, or whatever you’re using fails, I miss my snark, and I hope it’s not sychophancy to suggest that Sadly, No! isn’t a substitute for the level of snark I’m used to.

    Here’s my comment on the race so far, framed from the GOP POV:
    “‘McCain: Beaten, but not tortured.‘ *Cough*DeerHunter*Cough*” **

    and

    American Democracy: “We the People: Tortured, but not beaten.”

    **DeNiro/Walken 08

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Blue Herald » Blog Archive » The Passion of Saint McCain says:
    September 4, 2008 at 12:12 am

    […] There was a stark irony to the telling of the tale, though, since as John Cole noted, both Bush and Thompson went to great lengths to avoid using the word “torture,” since by Bush administration standards, McCain was not tortured (and despite his stated opposition to torture, McCain voted to allow it). Plus, authoritarian movement conservatives, many of them self-described Christians, sadly support torture when it’s of infidels, or at least anyone the Bush administration says is guilty – although many Guantanamo prisoners are actually innocent. (Interestingly, tonight Huckabee did say “brutally tortured” and Palin used “torturous interrogations.” I haven’t heard all the speeches yet, so I’ll be interested to hear the language.) […]

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