(CNN) - Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam, warned his Republican rivals during Wednesday night's GOP debate about the consequences of using torture on enemy combatants.
"The risk is that when an American is in the hands of an enemy, that they will use the fact that we tortured people as an excuse to torture our brave men and women in the military," said the presidential hopeful. "I'm not prepared to expose them to that."
After his plane was shot down in Vietnam in 1967, McCain was held as a prisoner of war at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" for five and a half years.
–CNN Associate Producer Lauren Kornreich