I don’t know who won the great presidential debate, but I’ll tell you what most struck me, what, in fact, almost knocked me out of my chair. Two things actually.

First, John McCain saying early in the debate that he “opposed President Bush on torture.”

Second, Barack Obama saying later in the debate, “I give Sen. McCain great credit on the torture issue.”

It was fit for Alice in Wonderland.

True, McCain opposed Bush on torture back in 2005, but in February of this year, when the Senate passed a bill to specifically bar the CIA from using such techniques as waterboarding, forced nudity, electric shocks and attack dogs and limit it to the military’s approved techniques, McCain voted against that bill, saying the CIA needed its own “extra measures,” and he urged President Bush to veto the bill, which Bush did.

Can you imagine the effrontery for him now to boast that he opposed Bush on torture?

And can you imagine the opacity, or the cunning – I don’t know which – for Obama to give him credit for it?

I will have more to say on this subject in my column in the print version of the Daily Gazette.