What we didn’t know before
September 5th, 2008At the very end of his otherwise pedestrian speech yesterday, Senator McCain said something that struck us as revealing. Probably everyone else knows this, but we didn’t. It sounded a little like a confession when Senator McCain said that he broke under torture:
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone.
Perhaps we haven’t been paying attention all this time, but we didn’t know until today that during this two-week long episode McCain says he twice attempted suicide and finally signed confessions given to him by the North Vietnamese. It is certainly unsurprising in light of all this that Senator McCain opposed waterboarding and some other coercive means of gathering information.
Inspired by the intriguing confession in McCain’s speech, we did a little further inquiry. We have a copy of Faith of My Fathers (a book with no table of contents or index, by the way), but hadn’t read it. We looked in on the episode that McCain referred to in his speech last night (pp.244-245):
Bob Craner tried to reassure me that I had resisted all that I was expected to resist. But I couldn’t shake it off. One night I either heard or dreamed I heard myself confessing over the loudspeakers, thanking the Vietnamese for receiving medical treatment I did not deserve. Most guys broke at one time or another. I doubt anyone gets over it entirely. There is never enough time and distance between the past and the present to allow one to forget his shame. I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day.
McCain’s book discusses his post-captivity physical therapy (p.345) but appears silent on whatever psychological treatment he received. It would be very interesting to know about this, but, as with Senator Kerry, this important subject apparently continues to be off-limits in political discourse. It is long past time to end this taboo.


