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 The Straight Talk Express Has Run Out of Rails
by Alex Hanna
http://www.theseminal.com/ I could deal with ignoring campaign finance. I could somewhat deal with the turn around on immigration. But this time, Senator McCain has just ran his little train off the tracks. McCain, the veteran POW who endured extreme torture during Vietnam, a staunch critic of utilizing torture — outspoken during his appearances with Mr. 30%, the debate on the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act, and even on the campaign trail — has unequivocally very equivocally stood his ground. Let me state this flatly: it was never our purpose to prevent the CIA from detaining and interrogating terrorists. On the contrary, it is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to do so. At the same time, the CIA’s interrogation program has to abide by the rules, including the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act Err, right. They have to abide by the rules, but they can still detain and interrogate terrorists. Without torture techniques. Right? When, in 2005, the Congress voted to apply the Field Manual to the Department of Defense, it deliberately excluded the CIA. The Field Manual, a public document written for military use, is not always directly translatable to use by intelligence officers. In view of this, the legislation allowed the CIA to retain the capacity to employ alternative interrogation techniques. I’d emphasize that the DTA permits the CIA to use different techniques than the military employs, but that it is not intended to permit the CIA to use unduly coercive techniques – indeed, the same act prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. What we need is not to tie the CIA to the Army Field Manual, but rather to have a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program. Anyhow, you get the idea of this little colloquy. McCain's sunk to new lows here, completely abstracting his personal experiences of pain from new legislation. The straight shooting Maverick from 2000 has moved into being a flat out vote digger after getting his feelings hurt a little at CPAC and not being enough "to the Right". It's really phenomenal that something that the experience effectively spurred McCain into politics can be abandoned in the same pursuit. The Senator would rather leave the determination of what constitutes "legal interrogation techniques" under the auspices of the CIA and the Justice Department. And we know how effective they are. While I'm on AG Mukasey, from NPR interviewed him about the whole waterboarding mess not too long ago. He said the waterboarding debate was really overblown, since it only applied to like "3 cases". Ahh, okay. So if a few individual liberties are shat upon, it's totally cool. Gotcha. Another thing I found curious was that the AG said he found the practice of waterboarding "personally repugnant". And suddenly, when thinking about Senator McCain and Mukasey, I realized something. Both men are personally disgusted by torture and waterboarding, but both are also politically ready to caste off their personal fetters of, what's that word… decency, and give intelligence agencies carte blanche to "do what they need to do". Mukasey doesn't have much to gain from this; he's already appointed. But for McCain this is obviously a move to gain political capital with the most conservative of the Right. It's disgusting, it's shameful, but at least there shouldn't be any more illusions about what McCain's willing to do to squeeze blood from extreme-Right GOP. And this turns McCain completely on his head. McCain, who, in 2005, said of utilizing torture, "[it] is not about who they are. It's about who we are." So WHO are you, Senator McCain? Apparently just another GOP political hack who'll do anything to get elected. (h/t HuffPo and TPM for great articles and further reading)
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