PolitiFact botches another one

I've been sitting on this one for a number of days because I've been engaged with a time-intensive non-writing project lately.

I haven't been reading The St. Petersburg Times'/Congressional Quarterly's PolitiFact regularly. I just happened to stumble onto this entry while doing some research.

History supports McCain’s stance on waterboarding

The morning after the CNN/YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, John McCain remained firm in his stand against the use of an interrogation technique called “waterboarding.” He cited solid history to buttress his position.
(PolitiFact)

Though I intend to vote for McCain as things currently stand, the PolitiFact analysis is out in left field.

It's a bit difficult to blame them, however. They uncritically accepted a shoddy piece of scholarship by Judge Evan Wallach, published by credulous student editors at the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

Wallach's carelessness is summed up by his blanket treatment of "water cure," "water torture" and "waterboarding" despite the fact that the descriptions vary substantially between the most common descriptions of the former two and the latter.

Here's the statement from McCain that receives PolitiFact's highest mark for veracity:

“I forgot to mention last night that following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding,” he told reporters at a campaign event.

Wallach's essay (rough draft found here) provides no support for even the existence of a "charge" of waterboarding. The essay most closely approaches that judgment when it makes the claim that a technique similar to modern waterboarding served to support a charge of treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Sawada and his co-defendants were not specifically charged with torture in the trial charges and specifications.
("Drop by Drop" by Evan Wallach)

They weren't specifically charged with waterboarding, either.

McCain and PolitiFact were probably both suckered by the Wallach essay, figuring that that Columbia Journal of Transnational Law wouldn't publish it without careful review. The carelessness of PolitiFact is nonetheless painfully evident in that they ignored McCain's specific claim relative to the content of Wallach's flawed essay.

Here's how PolitiFact rated McCain over the statement:

clipped from www.politifact.com

The rating means nothing more than how much McCain's statement accords with a particular orthodoxy. It is fairly certain that McCain truly believes what he's saying, so it wouldn't make sense to suggest that he lied about it. Likewise, the workers at PolitiFact almost certainly have absolutely no thought of misleading those who make use of their, um, service.

But they blew it again on this one.


My take on waterboarding.

*****

Update June 16, 2024: Updated the link to the rough draft of Wallach's "Drop by Drop," using the Internet Archive. The old link had stopped working.