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Ah, the perils of being Republican presidential contender John McCain. Of all the GOP candidates, on paper his is perhaps the most solid resume: Naval aviator, Vietnam vet, prisoner of war, 20 year Senator with a consistent conservative voting record. But when you’re running within a party that cannot distinguish the TV show “24″ from real life and when your rivals boost their popularity with mindless rhetoric like “Double Gitmo!,” standing up for ideals like “The US shouldn’t torture” becomes a treacherous tightrope.
On This Week with George Stephanopolis, the issue of Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s refusal to classify waterboarding as torture came up. While the formerly tortured prisoner of war was clear that waterboarding IS torture (bully for him!), that doesn’t mean he’ll take a stand against Mukasey’s nomination:
JM: …It isn’t about an interrogation technique. It isn’t about whether someone is really harmed or not. It’s about what kind of nation we are. We are a nation that takes a moral high ground. If we engage in a practice that was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in Cambodia in the great genocide, is now being used on Buddhist monks in Burma and we’re going to be the same as that? How do we keep the moral high ground in the world? I would never use that …
GS: You obviously feel strongly about that. Will Mr. Mukasey have to state clearly that he believes waterboarding is torture in order to get your vote for Attorney General?
JM: I….I….I..can’t be that absolute. But I want to know his answer. I want to know his answer. Obviously, you judge a candidate for office or a nominee for office on the entire record, but this is a very important issue for me.
That’s some moral high ground, McCain.
Filed Under: John McCain, This Week/George Stephanopoulos, Torture
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Is it a wide stance?
Well when a man has been tortured, it is kind of hard for him to support it despite the party line. I applaud McCain here.
The pathetic posturing and grand-standing that takes place in these hearings on the nominations of political appointees IS torture!!
I respect McCain…and actually once considered voting for him…but he lost his credibility with me years ago…
In GQ this month, there’s an article about McCain’s spectacular collapse from front runner to long shot. It is a shame, really, b/c he’s a man of substance, but a few dumb comments was all it took to derail him.
I cant be Absolute???
He cant absolutely say he wont vote for a guy who believes in torture?
Then he should shut up about pol pot, and the rest of the war criminals because now he is one.
John McCain, you are a pathetic shell of a man. You sold out everything you ever stood for a *chance* to be President. Pathetic.
liberalNmoderation @ 4:
Let me qualify this statement, lol! I considered voting for him pre 2000, for about a week…
And Blue Lensman@3….well said!!!
John a consistent conservative? Then I’ll be a son of Hitler. There’s only one consistent conservative candidate, we know who.
We have destroyed entire cities strike that, entire countries, is that moral?
ask that George,,
I don’t know why we’re wasting our time with McCain. He’s NEVER going to get the GOP nomination (despite the media pretending, hoping or believing that he might be nominated by the GOP).
The GOP race now boils down to either Guiliani or Romney. Let’s focus on what counts. OK.
What the hell is wrong with his jaw? LOL
Jericho @ 9:
Hillary?
Waterboarding worked for witches. Hundreds of thousands of witches were identified using this and other legal techniques.
What worked for identifying consorts of Satan should work equally well for identifying terrorists and political dissidents.
Torbin @ 12:
I believe that his jaw was broken severely when he was a POW in Vietnam…He lost quite a few teeth also….that man went through hell…
I would like to point out the missing fact that the history of waterboarding isn’t confined to the Spanish Inquisition and communists like Pol Pot. It was used extensively by AMERICAN FORCES in the Philippine - American war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cure
vampire mccain will do anything to keep the mouth-breather donations coming in
The US lost the “moral highground” when they started to exempt their thugs from the clauses in the Geneva convention, targetting war crimes. In one fell swoop, the whole US military was by self-admittance, war criminals, as they refuse to live up to these standards.
It is hillarious that 6 years later, people running for the highest office in the US are so completely blind to how their nation looks from the outside, that they are arguing that the US should not loose the moral highground! When the question if people should be tortured or not is used as election pork!
Please, reenter reality, for crying out loud.
Given that McCain mentions in part the following:
It rather gels with an article I posted back in march on waterboading. Of course I’m going to tell you it’s worth reading because it’s my blog, but it is worth a read if only by virtue of the twist at the end.
Water boarding
Weaseldog @ 14:
I know dunking was used, as well as putting a funnel in a person’s mouth and pouring in huge amounts of water, but I’m not sure about waterboarding per se.
the creep called mccain, of the double talk express, is so utterly bent over, pants down, grasping his ankles, asshole spreak wife and swishing this way and that, screaming ‘next’ to the agents of evil. lucifer himself, called repiglicans that the only thing he can be ‘absolute’ about is that very word: NEXT
Jack Ely @ 16:
Ah that still don’t make it right though…
John, you’ve moved past becoming a comma in history..you’re a hyphen.
Yeah… I’m getting sick of his “I won’t compromise on torture…except not really” BS.
Actually, I would say: he’s a colon.
(Thank you! Please tip your server!)
One thing about Republicans, they have no compunction with digging the hole deeper… so they can go lower. John McCain is not condeming torture in strong enough terms for me.
And as someone who should be under no illusions about it, I wonder, late at night, if he knows that.
Torture is absolutely immoral.
Except when the U.S. does it. Then it kicks ass.
John is working hard to morph into his idol…GW Bush…soon his popularity ratings will also be in the 20s…and then he can fly onto the deck of an aircraft carrier and spout…”Mission Accomplished”!
I dunno, seemed rather apropos at the moment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM4ADoVc6TU
Charles @ 5:
That’s utter crap ………
I believed that McLame was a politician with whom I disagreed with completely , yet held him in some esteem because of the perceived toughness for surviving captivity ; that was all lost when he did absolutely nothing , and then ended up kissing Shrub’s stupid ass , after Karl Turd Blossom Rove started a smear campaign against the youngest member of McLame’s family (his dark-skinned adopted daughter , Bridget).
When your politicial standing means more to you than your own family , you are beneath contempt and are no “MAN”………..If you aren’t willing to lay it all on the line for your own family , what the hell are you going to do for the American population who are essentially strangers ?
Screw him and all the horseshit GOP presidential hopefuls…………..
Candidate mccain , without doubt going to vote for confirmation - regardless of what mucusy says in answer to the questions re. torture.
Also, the demoquacks are now looking stupid by asking for more details about mucusy’s stance on torture, especially when he has already made it crystal clear that anything the president does is legal (and if it isn’t he will damn well invent an argument that says it is).
Again, why are we wasting our time condemning McCain. He’s never going to be the GOP nominee. The GOP nominee will be either Guiliani or Romney. We need to focus on condemning them rather than McCain. And both of them unambiguously favor torture in certain cases.
Whether something is or isn’t “torture” is meaningless: Geneva prohibits all abuse. Waterboarding is abuse. not that hard. McCain needs to be asked directly: Do you oppose or support illegal abuse which Geneva prohibits?
liberalNmoderation @ 22:
I think the point jack was making was that the US military losing the high moral ground has happened a looooooooooooong time ago.
As Pogo said: “We have met the enemy and they is us!” McCain knows that short-term results will lead to long-term problems. Using these techniques MAY get us some useful intellegence, but, will ultimately cause untold problems over the long haul. If we use these “techniques” we basically just become the very people our enemies accuse us of being. The end does NOT justify the means…..
Need a step ladder, John?
“I can’t be that absolute.” Man, Mortimer Adler is gonna have to come back from the dead so that he can insert a picture of McCain in the Great Ideas synopticon, under “Moral Relativism.”
McCain won’t even oppose against a man who would allow Americans to use the same torture techniques that were used against McCain himself, along with all his POW buddies in Vietnam.
It’s not just the lies, John. It’s what the lies reveal about the total emptiness of your morality. Today you have sunk down to the level of the frat monkey who dodged Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard, and then walked out on that. Hell, you’re even lower on the ladder than Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz, because you know what torture really is, and yet you’re willing to let it slide in order to further your completely delusional presidential ambitions.
Whatever you may have been once, you gave it up when you kissed the ring, John McCain.
Well, I think what McCain is saying is that you have to be flexible. You have to look at all the fine points about a torturer that make him a good American _on_average_. I’m reminded of Susan Matthews science fiction books in which her main character is an alcoholic sadist judicial torturer. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his good moments. And I’m sure Mukasey would too.
ysbaddaden @ 20:
The practice of covering a person’s face with a cloth or bag and then pouring water over it was used in the Spanish Inquisition. As was the dunking style of water boarding. Estimates of the number of human beings tried and killed as witches during the Spanish Inquisition number in the hundreds of thousands. There was plenty of time for sadists to experiment with various techniques.
One of the main targets of the Inquisition was the Cathars. A Christian sect that believed in living as Jesus did. They preached against tithing and organized religion. They traveled about, giving sermons and asking only for essentials such as food, water, second hand clothing and shelter as payment. They worshiped wherever they were. Often a woodland glen was a good enough spot, hidden from the Catholic Clergy. they probably had gospels that the Church has long since destroyed, and there is reason to believe that they differed from the version of the gospels we know today, in accounts about tithing and places of worship.
In other words, they bucked the system and hurt the Church’s finances.
The fact that they hid from the orthodox clergy and performed secret services, weddings, funerals etc… may well have carried over to Salem where it was thought that witches consorted with Satan in secret woodland glens. Any religious ceremony done outside the church is suspect.
Ron Paul is the only consistent conservative on the ballot. The only candidate who still gives a damn about the constitution. And the only one in either party with the balls to stand up to the neocons and their phony war on terror.
Weaseldog @ 39:
They could get creative. Matthew Hopkins, the English Witch-Finder General had lancets (used to detecting the devil’s mark) with retractable blades, so the suspect would incriminate himself by NOT screaming in pain.
One inquisitor bragged about an oven he created for roasting witches alive, the number he killed, and apparently some were children as young as 9.
Joe for Unity08 @ 40:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Joe for Unity08 @ 40:
Yeah , unfortunately he’s a nutbag on all other issues ………
And Paul being the only one in either party to stand up against the neo-cons and their phony war is completely untrue ; Dennis Kucinich has constantly displayed his unwillingness to fold .
And he is light-years ahead on his position in regards to all the other problems/issues…….
Plus , you’ve already admitted to Paul being a cancervative ; that is something this country does not need , ever ……
Gone, gone, gone…gone gone, McCain…a gone, gone, gone…gone gone McCain…gone McCaaainnnn…you’re so damn lame…gone, McCaaaain…bomb the Ayatollah…you’re such a big assshola…Gone McCaaaain…
MCMetal @ 43:
Ron Paul’s a scrotum?
ysbaddaden @ 45:
Personally…I prefer nutsack…has a nicer ring to it.
Nutsack! Ring! I made a funny!!!
ysbaddaden @ 45: