What's Important 3

Third in a series.

This entry's from Time, early in April. It's actually an attempt to claim that McCain has not changed his mind about torture, which ends up telling us that not even that is enough to make him stop kissing up to the White House:

A review of the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue. But at a time when new details are emerging of the Administration's intimate involvement with formulating specific detainee interrogation practices, the Arizona Senator does now find himself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with President Bush on a key election-year vote about those very same controversial policies. ...

Some human rights observers say McCain's latest position is best explained as a symptom of exhaustion at fighting an Administration that has continuously resisted efforts to clearly outlaw practices like waterboarding. "I don't believe John McCain is comfortable with the current CIA program," said Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, who has worked closely with McCain and his staff on these issues. "I think McCain just reached a point where he didn't want any more confrontations with the White House. He wanted to win the White House."

McCain senior adviser Mark Salter said the candidate continues to monitor whether the techniques employed by the CIA officials pass legal muster. "If McCain has reason to believe that they have crossed the line, he will litigate that," Salter said, explaining that the Senator might discuss these concerns publicly or privately. "McCain communicates his view directly to the people doing it," Salter added, in reference to interrogation procedures. ...

The problem with all of these measures was that they continued to depend on interpretation by Bush Administration lawyers, who continue to be both secretive and evasive of congressional intent. As recently as February 6, the day after the Super Tuesday primary, a White House spokesman refused to rule out the future use of waterboarding as a technique for high-value detainees. The Attorney General has also declined to say that the technique, or other extreme techniques, are outlawed. On March 8, Bush vetoed the latest congressional attempt to force the CIA to adhere to the Army Field Manual, a rule book that prescribes mostly psychological methods of interrogation, and clearly prohibits the use of forced nudity, waterboarding, hooding and the use of military dogs. Congressional Democratic leaders have not yet announced if they plan to bring up the issue again, but they are unlikely to muster enough votes to override the veto.

Though McCain supports the President's position on the veto, he has spent the better part of a year on the campaign trail speaking out against waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods as forms of illegal torture. In recent weeks, as it became clear that he would win the Republican nomination, his direct criticism of the Bush Administration has softened. "It is unfortunate," he said on the Senate floor on February 13, of the Bush Administration's refusal to call waterboarding illegal. "It would be far better, I believe, for the Administration to state forthrightly what is clear in current law."