Or was it just simple confusion?

Written by Kristin Chapman
July 11, 2008 38 Comments

It seems Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one who has trouble recalling the details of the past: While in Pittsburgh yesterday, John McCain said it was the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive line that he listed as his squadron mates during interrogations as a POW. And yet, every other account he has given–including in his best-selling 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers–he said it was the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers anecdote is not only a key part of the McCain biography, it’s part of his argument against torture.

Explaining why he thinks torture can result in erroneous information, McCain wrote in Newsweek in 2005, “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear–whether it is true or false–if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.”

The McCain campaign insists the mix-up was just an honest mistake–but how do you mix up a story you’ve told countless times? For this Republican gal, it boils down to two scenarios: Either it’s a sign of his age (which is no good for a man who might run our country) or it’s political pandering at its worst.