Albatross!
As George W. Bush vetoes legislation designed to prevent the United States from torturing foreign nationals, he exposes the lack of straight talk from his new best friend, John McCain (bolded mine).
President Bush vetoed Saturday legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, saying it "would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror."
"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
Congress approved an intelligence authorization bill that contains the waterboarding provision on slim majorities, far short of the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto.
Bush's long-expected veto reignites the Washington debate over the proper limits of U.S. interrogation policies and whether the CIA has engaged in torture by subjecting prisoners to severe tactics, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.
The issue also has potential ramifications for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and a longtime critic of coercive interrogation tactics who nonetheless backed the Bush administration in opposing the CIA waterboarding ban. The Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), both support the ban, though neither was present for last month's Senate vote for the bill that Bush is to veto.
"It is shameful that George Bush and John McCain lack the courage to ban torture," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.
How can you be "a longtime critic of coercive interrogation tactics" while backing the Bush administration in opposing the CIA waterboarding ban? In fact, McCain was against torture before he decided he need to suck up to conservatives. And while he uses beltway logic to try and make a distinction between what the CIA does and what the Army does, other experienced government hands make no such distinction.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, suggested that those who support harsh methods simply lack experience and do not know what they are talking about. "If they think these methods work, they're woefully misinformed," Soyster said at a news briefing called in anticipation of the veto. "Torture is counterproductive on all fronts. It produces bad intelligence. It ruins the subject, makes them useless for further interrogation. And it damages our credibility around the world."
In two separate forums earlier this week, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, commander of the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defended the efficacy of less-coercive, "rapport-building" interrogation tactics.
"We get so much dependable information from just sitting down and having a conversation and treating them like human beings in a businesslike manner," Buzby told reporters in a conference call Thursday.
As a reminder, this was John "Straight Talk" McCain in 2005:
The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies.
In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture.
To carve out legal exemptions to this basic principle of human rights risks opening the door to abuse as a matter of course, rather than a standard violated truly in extremis .
Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them unto death. But every one of us--every single one of us--knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to our attempts to return home with honor. For without our honor, our homecoming would have had little value to us.
And this was Straight Talk McCain in Oct 2007:
Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot and being used on Buddhist monks as we speak.
People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that.
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 whatever he thinks you want to know.
Maybe McCain's barbecue buddies in the press will pin straight talkin' John down and highlight the doubletalk. My take is that McCain is confident he won't be pressed on it. Remember McCain's book, Worth the Fighting For (p. 192 in relation to the Keating 5 scandal he was involved in):
I was in a hell of a mess. And I decided right then that not talking to reporters or sharply denying even the appearance of a problem wasn't going to do me any good. I would henceforth accept every single request for an interview from any source, prominent or obscure, and answer every question as completely and straightforwardly as I could. I was confident that the facts were on my side, and if the facts were disseminated broadly in the media would they spare me from a terrible fate. And they wouldn't be disseminated broadly unless I talked to the press constantly, ad infinitum, until their appetite for information from me was completely satisfied. It is a public relations strategy that I have followed to this day, and while it has gotten me in trouble from time to time, it has on the whole served both my interest and that of the public well.
How about it, journalists? Are you going to give McCain another pass and fall for the "public relations strategy that [he has] followed to this day"? Ask McCain for some straight talk to explain why waterboarding was torture but isn't now, and whether everything else he says becomes inoperative if it contradicts George W. Bush and/or interferes with his run for the Presidency, or prevents endorsements from far-right anti-Catholic bigots. Ask him if he thinks he's being hypocritical about waterboarding as torture. Ask him about why, if Iraq policy and waterboarding policy are now 'just go along with President 30%', his election would not be a third term for Bush. That deserves some real straight talk, the kind McCain isn't giving anyone, least of all the American people.
h/t to BarbinMD for research and assistance on this piece.