Despicable!

As anyone who's read many of my posts (which is a far larger number than I thought would read them when I started and for which I am very grateful) may surmise, words like Honor, Integrity, Courage and Duty are important to me.  It may also be surmised from the comments on those posts, they are important to those commentators also.  Which is reassuring.  Reading the news or watching it on TV, thumbing through Facebook or, God Forbid, Twitter, would lead one to believe that those concepts are no longer important.  

I don't believe that.

Which is why I rarely read the news, watch much TV, haven't posted on Facebook in years and don't believe that anything worth saying (beyond Thank You, or I'm sorry) can be said in 140 characters.

But, I digress.

I believe there was a new low in conversation this week.  Apparently,  the ongoing discussion about the use of waterboarding in interrogating terrorists has descended into the realm of name calling.

This is an important discussion with no right or wrong answers, only bad and less bad.   Should we? In a perfect world, no.  Should we ban it, completely? In a perfect world, yes.  Use thereof lessens us as a people.

But this isn't a perfect world.  More talented debaters than I can "Yeah, but..." both sides of the argument, and there's validity to both positions, so I'll leave that debate to them. 

When I was flying, dying didn't bother me much.  It would most likely have been alive on second, not alive the next.  At worst, there would have been time for a final "Ah S4!7!" and it would be over.  Nothing to be done about it.

Source

However, getting shot down and captured scared the bejesus out of me.  Remember I came on Active Duty right after Vietnam.  I knew several people who had come under the kind care of the North Vietnamese.  Some I knew through my Father as student pilots whose first operational assignment was Vietnam.  Others were IPs of mine or in my squadrons.  

Sometimes, they would open up about the experience and, while alcohol was involved in the telling, the stories were always sobering.

To a man,  all said that they had "broken" under torture.  Some broke earlier than others and there are a few who are not invited to POW/MIA events for their actions.  The rest came to the realization that talking under torture was not an end, but a pause.  They knew the honorable thing to do was to hold out as long as humanly possible, give as little useful info as you could, recover from your injuries and start all over again.  Make your captors waste as much time as possible to get very little info.

As I said, those stories were sobering, and cause for much introspection.  Would I, could I hold up to their standard?  Would it be better to just ride it in?  Could I do that?  Fortunately, I was never placed in that position.  

It also was apparent to me in listening to the stories, that the story tellers, whether they were ex-POWs or knew ex-POWs, did not believe there was any dishonor in having broken, that it was inevitable and as long as you continued resisting, your honor was intact.  The few who had collaborated were shunned by the group as a whole, however.

Col Day
Source

I have read Col George "Bud" Day's books, heard him speak, and have met him. He and Sen McCain were cellmates in North Vietnam.  At no point, did he give any indication that Sen McCain was anything other than honorable in his duty while a POW.  That's good enough for me.

Now, some asshat, named McInerney, has taken to calling the Senator "Songbird", because the Senator "knows torture works" alluding to the fact the Senator broke while a POW.

Yes, asshat, he knows it works because he experienced it.  Knowing that, he STILL doesn't think we should do it. That's his belief and he's entitled to it.  

I'm not particularly fond of the Senator and don't like much of his politics, but I will not condone the calling into question his honorable actions as a POW to score political points.  The fact that the asshat uses his retired rank to grant more credence to his commentary only further pisses me off raises my ire.

Yes, I think there's a case to be made for Enhanced Interrogation techniques.  In a Vince Flynn scenario where a nuke is hidden in a large city and the clock is ticking?  You betcha.

Senator McCain disagrees.  He knows torture works and STILL doesn't believe we should use it.  

Is he wrong? I'm not so sure. But that discussion needs to be conducted by adults, not preening peacocks obsessed with their own opinion of themselves using character assassination in order to make their point.  Despicable!

Fox News, McInerney needs to go. 

Update: Behold the power of Chant Du Départ

Full disclosure: I was deployed to McInerney's headquarters at Elmendorf for an exercise and have interacted with him.  Wasn't impressed.  My impression was that he was one of "those" AF generals.  You know, "what have you done for me lately?"  However, I didn't think he'd sink to this level.