Double Talk Express: John Mccain Flip-Flops on Torture bill

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

The cross-in-the-dirt story - although deeply fishy to any fair observer - is in the realm of the unprovable. But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn't, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/was-mccain-tort....
Last night I was clicking back and forth between the Mets/Yankees game The Empire Strikes Back on cable. I hadn't watched Empire in a long time. There's a scene where Darth Vader tortures Han Solo (which occurs off-screen, but Han's screams are audible). Han is then dumped into the room with Lando and Pricess Leia, and the Imperial thug says contemptuously, "Don't worry. He won't be permanently damaged." So include Darth Vader -- Darth fucking Vader -- among the prestigious company we're keeping with our sure-it-hurts-like-hell-but-if
-it-doesn't-leave-a-mark-it
-ain't-torture approach to interrogation.
The Nazis came up with this argument first. It took half a century before Bush and Cheney followed their lead.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/05/enhanced-interr....
--------------------------------------------
In his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, Karl Rove remembers something that was done to John McCain in Vietnam:
"Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours. The torture so badly busted up his shoulders that to this day Mr. McCain can't raise his arms over his head. One night, a Vietnamese guard loosened his bonds, returning at the end of his watch to tighten them again so no one would notice."

This is what is called a "stress position." It was authorized, monitored and practised as a torture technique by this president, whose chief adviser at the time was Karl Rove. Rove even planned to run the 2006 Congressional campaign on the message of being tough enough on prisoners in American custody. In the same op-ed, Rove refers warmly to McCain's Bangladeshi adopted daughter - the same daughter his surrogates demonized in the 2000 campaign, by spreading rumors that McCain had a black illegitimate daughter. Every now and again, one is shocked by the Big Lies and chutzpah that come out of a man as utterly indifferent to the truth as Rove. And then one realizes: this is what these people do for a living. They say anything to retain and wield power.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/rove-stress-pos....

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[Turtleproof]

When McCain fails so deliberately and so completely on such a plain, easy issue, ("torture is wrong") how catastrophic will his decisions be in regards to complicated issues?

Oh, right, he's actually STUMPING about how there will be more wars if he is President.

[KTMJIMMY]

I hope that we can get a change and not have mccain palin as are next leaders. canada does sound nice if so...

[youngdones]

Regardless of what the CIA and government says, they have been torturing people in ways that would make even Saddam Hussein cringe.

[porscheghcje]

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[skyninjabot]

Hahahaha :) You did not want McCane? Enjoy Obama if so... all I can say is you have lost. (And it appears that only Putin and his Russian pederation have won.)

[frio109]

Isn't fantastic that Obama will bring KSM to NYC for trial.........That will be torture. It will be worse then the OJ trial.

[mightyblack1]

Karl"Bucket Head"Rove need to go sit his punk ass down some where and he's a big ole bitch too.

[dsspike51]

If only people were smart enough to realize the army field manual is designed to prevent people from becoming indictable war criminals!

[log140]

mc caine just shows us what kind of jerks politicians are!!!

[928nanotech]

So, Obama says we can't pour a bucket of water over the head of muderers, BUT we can sever the spinal cord of a 8 month baby? Yes we can!

[istofe21]

its kind of surprising that he would want to keep drowning torture/waterboarding legal if he knows how terrible torture actually is.