[A-List] US state: John McCain

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

This unfolding scandal looks like it may produce another Richard Clarke-type
moment, in the form of John McCain combusting at Bush's expense.

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Prisoner Abuse Scandal Puts McCain in Spotlight Once Again
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times: May 10, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 9 - Tucked away in Senator John McCain's office, almost
invisible amid the family pictures, trinkets and mementos that are the stuff
of a busy lawmaker's career, are hints of another life:

A chunk of pale orange brick from the infamous prison, nicknamed the Hanoi
Hilton, where Mr. McCain was held for more than five years during the
Vietnam War. A framed photocopy of a telegram, dated Sept. 13, 1968,
documenting the young Captain McCain's decision to refuse his captors' offer
of early release. A photograph of the statue that stands by the small lake
in Hanoi where Mr. McCain, a Navy fighter pilot, was shot down and captured.

The senator from Arizona does not flaunt these things - the telegram hangs
out of view, behind a door - and he does not often talk of his other life.
"It was a long time ago," he said quietly last week, "and it is something
I've put behind me."

But as the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal unfolds, Mr. McCain is, as he often
is, in the center of the swirl on Capitol Hill. Now, though, he has a bigger
platform than ever, by dint of his unusual position as both a member of the
Senate Armed Services Committee and a former prisoner of war. And he is
filled with anger, the kind of anger that bespeaks something deep and
personal.

With the Senate preparing to take up a resolution condemning the abuse,
possibly as soon as Monday, Mr. McCain has made it clear that he intends to
use both his platform and his anger to prod the Bush administration to make
the facts of the scandal public immediately. He is not interested, he said
in an interview Friday, in "some commission to investigate and report out
six or nine months from now."

"They can do whatever they want," he said, "but the facts have got to come
out now."

Those facts are not yet out to the senator's satisfaction, and his furor was
on full display on Friday as he questioned Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld, repeatedly cutting Mr. Rumsfeld off when he was unable to say who
was in charge of the interrogations and what instructions were given to
guards. His face grew red and his brow furrowed as his voice rose in
exasperation. "Secretary Rumsfeld," Mr. McCain declared, practically
exploding, "in all due respect, you've got to answer this question!"

Mr. McCain's rage was in full flare outside the hearing room as well, as a
reporter suggested that the mistreatment had been necessary to extract
information.
"Look," the senator said stiffly, "history shows - and I know a little bit
about this - that mistreatment of prisoners and torture is not productive.
It's not productive. You don't get information that's usable from people
under torture, because they just tell you what you want to hear."

The son and grandson of prominent Navy admirals, Mr. McCain, 67, was making
his 23rd bombing run over North Vietnam when he was shot down in October
1967. Both arms and a leg were broken in the crash. "He was damn near dead
when they captured him," said Orson Swindle, a member of the Federal Trade
Commission and a former Marine pilot who lived with Mr. McCain in captivity.

The senator gained hero status when, though sick and injured, he refused an
offer of early release. He says he did not want to trade on his father's
name. "It would be used as propaganda," he said, "so I said no." He did not
get out of prison until 1973. The torture, Mr. Swindle said, "was pretty
severe." Mr. McCain said he speaks of it "only when asked."

His worst moment? "When I succumbed to physical mistreatment and signed a
war crimes confession." What kind of mistreatment? "It was pretty bad," he
said. Then he paused. "Including a broken arm."

And then, indicating that this particular line of questioning was over, he
announced brightly, "I want to remind you, my dear, it was long ago and far
away."

Long ago or not, Mr. McCain lives with the daily physical reminder of that
torture. His gait is slightly out of joint and his arms sit at awkward
angles to his body. He has difficulty raising them to comb his hair. Putting
a suit jacket on is a challenge. This does not seem to slow him down; he is
often seen dashing about the Capitol, running off to this hearing or that
television appearance.

Mr. McCain is known for a rare quality in Washington: candor. Reporters
quote him endlessly for the same reason his fellow Republicans are endlessly
irked by him: he never fails to offer a Republican critique of President
Bush, with whom he has not quite patched up relations after their bitter
primary campaign in 2000.

The senator did not disappoint on Friday morning, during a 45-minute
conversation in his office before the Rumsfeld hearing. Asked if Mr. Bush
had been correct, the day before, in apologizing for the abuse, Mr. McCain
said the apology was late. When should it have come? "Before yesterday. The
moment it broke." Mr. McCain also said the Abu Ghraib prison, a symbol of
torture under Saddam Hussein, was now a symbol of shame to the United States
and should be razed as a gesture to the Arab world.

Despite what some might think, the senator insists he was not reminded of
his own experience, more than three decades ago, when he saw the photographs
of naked Iraqi prisoners, images he calls "so horrific it defies my
imagination." But asked to compare the two situations, he offered a quick
and revealing rejoinder: "I was never subjected to sexual humiliation and
degradation."

Rick Davis, who ran Mr. McCain's campaign for the presidency in 2000, was
struck by that comparison. "He said, `You know, I was tortured, but I was
never humiliated.' To me, torture is humiliation. I guess he saw it in a
different light. Only someone who has been there would understand the
difference."

But if the senator is angry, he says it is not because the prisoner abuse
scandal evokes his own past. It is because he sees an institution he loves,
the American military, sullied by its own behavior.

"I have seen a lot of people die," Mr. McCain said. "I've seen a lot of
terrible things in my life. But to see it done by Americans to human beings
is what's so appalling. It's so outrageous, I can't describe it."