Time flip flops on McCain's torture flip flop
04.11.08 - Posted by AsiansVote
Time Magazine asks: Has McCain Flip-Flopped on Torture?
AsiansVote answers: Yes.
Alas, Time's Michael Scherer claims that a "review of the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue." Yet Scherer himself points out that McCain's tough talk against torture means nothing given his failure to challenge the Bush Administration's claim that only it can define what torture is:
"Cruel and inhuman treatment is defined as an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical pain or suffering," McCain explained on the Senate floor, during this second effort. "Such mental suffering need not be prolonged to be prohibited. The mental suffering need only be more than transitory." McCain has said he was assured by government officials that one of the most extreme techniques, waterboarding, was illegal under these laws.
The problem with all of these measures was that they continued to depend on interpretation by Bush Administration lawyers, who continue to be both secretive and evasive of congressional intent. As recently as February 6, the day after the Super Tuesday primary, a White House spokesman refused to rule out the future use of waterboarding as a technique for high-value detainees. The Attorney General has also declined to say that the technique, or other extreme techniques, are outlawed. On March 8, Bush vetoed the latest Congressional attempt to force the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual, a rule book that prescribes mostly psychological methods of interrogation, and clearly prohibits the use of forced nudity, waterboarding, hooding and the use of military dogs.
So McCain says he's against torture and waterboarding. But he supports the President's veto of legislation that would curb the Administration's ability to allow for torture and waterboarding? And Scherer insists that McCain hasn't flipped on the issue or sided with Bush?
Scherer seems to have flip flopping issues of his own.
UPDATE: Scherer claims that McCain's vote against requiring the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual "was not a flip-flop, but rather the continuation of a position he took in 2005 when he first championed a bill to restrict the Bush Administration's ability to mistreat detainees." Yet Scherer himself notes that the first draft of McCain's 2005 bill "specifically outlined a plan to make the Army Field Manual 'the basis for a uniform standard adhered to by all elements of the United States Government.'" In other words, McCain was for applying the Army Field Manual before he was against it. Scherer sweeps the contradiction away by quoting a McCain spokesman who assures us that that first drafts of bills don't mean anything. But McCain's willingness in 2005 to drop provisions that might actually prevent torture is consistent with the compromises he made in 2006 to allow the Bush Administration to define what torture is.
Scherer claims that McCain has never "taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue" (my emphasis). But when McCain's legislation concedes all power to the Bush Administration, what substance is left? Scherer ends with a plaintive McCain quote:
"It is unfortunate," he said on the Senate floor on February 13, of the Bush Administration's refusal to call waterboarding illegal. "It would be far better, I believe, for the Administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law."
It would be far better, I believe, if John McCain hadn't given the Bush Administration the right to create its own definitions of torture in the first place.
04.11.08 |
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