Gina Haspel

Eezt nozing, ja eezt nahzing; Ja, yuste drust me, ach Ja, eezt nahzzing. Nach, nahzzzing.

Yuste azk Zen-ator Mahch-ane. Eee vill tell u, yah, vat’s a liddlle biz du torture? Ja, Ja, Ja! Ja,eezt nahzzng, nahzzing add-all?

No, he wouldn’t. Were he there this week, Sen. John McCain would almost certainly say, as to Gina Haspel’s nomination — though I will not dare put quotation marks around the next because only the Senator can, could and has earned the right to:  And know that I could not have, and I doubt that any of the few who join me here could have stood up to what he did.

He has his faults. All public men and women do. But he lived to tell the story, a story that explains why he cannot raise his arms over his shoulders (did you know that?).

I disagree with a lot of what Sen. McCain has voted for over the years and said. But he has things no one can ever take away from him, starting with fearsome, determined courage only survivors of torture can claim and the rest of us can only — and do not want to imagine.

That is why I am sure he would say, could he be in Washington this week during Haspel’s hearing; would say:

I vote no; I vote no because a little bit of torture is the same as great amounts of torture, as ceaseless, remorseless torture. And I am here to tell you that torture does not work and leaves scars on those who torture as well as the tortured and imprints, on nations and societies that use it, the indelible mark of Cain.

We don’t do it.  Those among us who ordered it, permitted it, supervised it,  did it those 15 years ago – they stand in the dock of history, which judges them as it does all like them for the foul, evil creatures they chose to be. Every torturer made a decision to be one. Not one of them , not Gina Haspel or any other, should ever be elevated in or by our government — or we are lost and gone forever.