McCain: Waterboarding did not lead to capture of bin Laden

Waterboarding did not lead to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday in an emotional floor speech. 

McCain, who endured years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said tough interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not provide the details that led U.S. forces to bin Laden. 

“It was not torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden,” McCain said in a 20-minute speech.

"In fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee ... was obtained through standard, non-coercive means, not through any ‘enhanced interrogation technique,'" said McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Former Bush administration officials in the last week have argued its interrogation methods helped lead U.S. forces to bin Laden. McCain, who has criticized those techniques in the past, disputed the notion and said the use of such methods ends up hurting the United States.

“I believe some of these practices — especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution, and thus to me, indisputably torture — are and should be prohibited in a nation that is exceptional in its defense and advocacy of human rights,” said McCain, who was once tortured himself during imprisonment in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" in North Vietnam.  

“It is difficult to overstate the damage that any practice of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by Americans does to our national character and historical reputation — to our standing as an exceptional nation among the countries of the world," he said.

At the conclusion of McCain’s speech Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) commented that the oration would be “forever remembered in our country and this body.”