McCain Sells His Soul
As cynical as I have become about politics, this one surprises even me. I never would have thought that John McCain would vote this way on torture. Disgusting.
Has there ever been a more repugnant example of political pandering than John McCain’s decision to vote against a bill banning waterboarding, putting hoods on prisoners, forcing them to perform sex acts, subjecting them to mock executions, or depriving them of food, water, and medical treatment?
“When I was imprisoned, I took heart from the fact that I knew my North Vietnamese captors would never be treated like I was treated by them. There are much better and more effective ways to get information. You torture someone long enough, he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to know.” And there was this pithy and powerful summation of why torture should never be an option: “It’s not about who they are, it’s about who we are.”
Well, Senator McCain, this vote demonstrates very clearly who you are. How will you sleep at night?
10 thoughts on “McCain Sells His Soul”
The vote was to apply the current DOD rules to CIA interrogations. The campaign’s position is that other law currently prohibits waterboarding etc. by both DOD and CIA. It is troubling, but the details have been misrepresented a bit.
Not buying it so far, Paul. The CIA has been doing a lot of the torturing.
You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known; explain more?
I haven’t actually looked at the bill, I’m just repeating what the campaign is saying. Basically, their position is that these techniques are torture and are therefore illegal already, so there is no need to impose the specific limitations in the army field manual on interrogation on the arguably more “professional” CIA interrogators.
The message from the McCain camp seems to be that there might be techniques that are allowable under the general law, ie. not torture, but would be disallowed under the field manual. It’s not clear what those would be, and it may be that they are talking about creative new methods that have not been used yet.
Which gets us to the issue of legality. The current AG refuses to revisit the question and says that the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinions about the legality of “harsh interrogation methods” under prior law was definitive. He will not address the legality of those “methods” under current law until asked to do so by the President. Do not hold your breath.
McCain has stated on numerous occasions that he considers waterboarding to be torture. So one can assume that he considers the CIA’s conduct in waterboarding prisoners to have been a violation of existing law at the time of the OLC memo, which prohibited torture. So the real story here is his failure to show leadership in the Senate to call the administration to account for that.
You might take a look at this: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/02/torture_debate.html.
pme is your’s truly. Not that I have not read the OLC statement, but the other commenter who says that it does not contain any assertions regarding the legality of waterboarding is very likely correct.
Ok, I looked at the OLC statement that the campaign is waving around.
Here’s the deal. They have stopped waterboarding. They refuse to say if it is or ever was legal, all they will say is that it is no longer part of the “enhanced interrogation program.” So the argument here is really about stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc. I have not heard McCain making any definitive statement about the legality of this stuff, although he has told moving stories about his own experiences and the experiences of his fellow POWs with similar techniques.
It was about establishing a single standard.
There are still 19 approved interrogation techniques in the military field manual, including things like good cop/bad cop, false flag (making prisoners think they are in the custody of another country) – and the isolation of a prisoner from other prisoners for up to 30 days at a time.
The measure was included as an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization bill, which was approved today by the Senate.
The provision reads:
It specifically requires the CIA and all other U.S. intelligence agencies to follow the Army Field Manual’s protocols on interrogations.
The Army Field Manual specifically prohibits eight interrogation techniques:
So explain to me why McCain isn’t selling his soul here?
It isn’t about the forbidden techniques, it’s about the stuff that falls into the gap between those techniques and the authorized techniques. Specifically, it’s about sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, etc. McCain’s campaign has taken the position that the forbidden techniques you list are already illegal. I agree, although we do not yet have a statement from the OLC.
You could certainly argue that McCain sold his soul by voting to authorize a CIA program using the disorientation techniques, which in some ways may be worse than physical torture – basically, the goal is to make you psychotic. All I am saying is that he is not voting for waterboarding.
It’s frustrating that they’ve been able to frame the discussion in terms of parsing whether specific techniques are or are not torture, but here we are.
Well, as you say, this provision would do nothing against new or slightly altered techniques. However, most of the items on the previous list are being used – at Gitmo and other places – by the CIA and other even less regulated groups.
I agree that McCain didn’t vote for waterboarding. But he did vote against the provision that would make at least that list of techniques (including waterboarding) specifically illegal. That’s different from voting to make them legal, of course. It’s only now that anyone is admitting that 1) we have used this torture technique and 2) it is in fact illegal, at least now it is.
Did you know that the US has charged others with war crimes for the use of waterboarding? Just a little-remembered fact.
Why our international agreements somehow cease to matter under this administration is of course another matter entirely. It used to be that such things weren’t even a matter of discussion.
This is arguably one of McCain’s deepest-felt convictions, and one that is informed by direct experience. That he could condone torture in any form for the sake of pandering to the right wing says that his integrity is gone. And if that’s not selling your soul, what is?
It would be like me using my talents in order to write persuasive talking points for fundamentalists, or for Halliburton, or the oil companies. If I did that, I’d be selling my soul.
I know why he is doing it, and in a certain way I understand. But the one thing I always said about McCain is that at least we know he’d never condone torture. What kind of a man would turn his back on that? A very very ambitious one, to be sure, but one that I also feel has lost his way. This could have been a defining characteristic – the conservative that won’t sell out American values. Instead?
“Did you know that the US has charged others with war crimes for the use of waterboarding?”
Yep. It was a favorite Kmer Rouge technique.
“It used to be that such things weren’t even a matter of discussion.”
I remembered reading about Isreali use of stress positions, etc. in college and thinking that it was good to live in a country that recognized that there is no such thing as acceptable physical / mental abuse of prisoners.
Oh well.
I think Heidi and Ariana Huffington are both right here that this is a big change of course for McCain. He is the one who has spoken for a uniform standard so that no branch of service is doing something in the dark that comes as a surprise to others. This was a particular problem in Vietnam where the black ops gangs frequently wound up working against each others objectives. We have had many recent problems with bad intelligence obtained through torture that has undermined our stated mission of building democratic societies in the Middle East.
It looks to me like McCain traded this vote for the President’s endorsement. That may clinch the party nomination for him, but Democrats will find it easier to continue to campaign against the current administration. I for one no longer believe McCain’s promise to wage war differently.