Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic hits it right on the head. John McCain has gone back on his word not to play up his POW experiences during the presidential campaign, so this is absolutely fair game. He's not just exploiting his time as a POW, he's lifting other people's stories to gain sympathy. Couple that with his vote in the Senate to allow Americans to use the same torture "enhanced interrogation techniques" that were used on him and he leaves himself wide open for this one. It was just a matter of time... (h/t Jamie)

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation." Read on...