John McCain's Torture Opposition all Talk.

Last week, the Senate brought the Intelligence Authorization Bill — which contained a provision banning waterboarding — to the floor for a vote. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), an outspoken waterboarding critic, voted against the bill.

At the time, ThinkProgress questioned whether McCain would stand with Bush’s threatened veto of the legislation. Today, the AP reports that McCain has come out saying Bush should veto the measure, which would make the Army Field Manual the standard for CIA interrogations.

Talking to reporters today, McCain attempted to defend his stance:

“I said there should be additional techniques allowed to other agencies of government as long as they were not” torture. “I was on the record as saying that they could use additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,” McCain said.

“So the vote was in keeping with my clear record of saying that they could have additional techniques, but those techniques could not violate” international rules against torture.

But the vote was not “in keeping” with McCain’s unclear record on torture; in the past, McCain called waterboarding a “terrible and odious practice” that “should never be condoned in the U.S.”

Furthermore, what are these “additional techniques” outside the Field Manual that McCain thinks the CIA needs? Marty Lederman noted that the CIA can currently use “stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation.”

GOI: John "100 years in Iraq" McCain's "Straight-Talk Express" has become the "Double-Talk Express." I would think that given his animated opposition to waterboarding during the Republican primaries and debates that he would stand against this bill on principle. If he really was a man of his word and a "straight talking" man of principles that brags about then he would have flat out voted against this bill until the waterboarding provision was removed. Period. This isn't the kind of action you expect from someone who keeps calling everyone, "my friends." I don't know about the company you keep but I wouldn't call someone who waffles on their core principles like this a "friend."

It seems to me that waterboarding is worth taking a stand against even if it means voting against other techniques that he might deem "o.k." Yet I think that McCain himself was put into stress positions and I wonder if he has forgotten how terrible that was. And how is inducing hypothermia humane? Or threats to the detainees family? Plus, even though he says that his vote wasn't for waterboarding which he has previously described as torture his vote against the bill obviously means that he is tacitly approving of waterboarding. He's a smart and savvy enough politician to know that voting for this bill means waterboarding will continue to be practiced and that he helped establish it as standard military interrogation.

He can't have it both ways. Either waterboarding is torture and should never under any circumstances be approved in any way or it's not. This vote seems like a message to the Conservatives in his party that he will do whatever it takes to get their support and votes to help him win the White House because apparently to John McCain the ends justify the means.

It's this kind of double-speak that brings his judgment and trustfulness into question and those two important traits are something that his likely opponent, Barack Obama has in spades.

McCain was against the Bush tax cuts and now he's for them. He's not only now for the tax cuts but he wants to make them permanent!! This is the kind of weaseling around that Bush has done for eight long years, saying one thing and doing another. This and many other reasons point out to me that a vote for McCain is a vote for a third Bush term.

Falling in line with the Bush wing of the party isn't the kind of action that one would expect from an independent thinking and acting that defines a "maverick." As you know, McCain has been lauded as a maverick who supposedly thinks and acts on his own no matter what kind of pressure is leveraged against him.

As for this emerging story about a close relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, I'm avoiding posting about it until I learn more about it. I wouldn't be surprised though if this is true given the above examples of McCain's lack of trustworthiness.

---End of Transmission---