Stewart, McCain, and Benen
August 20, 2007 by Pete Abel
Yes, the title of this post could be yet another good name for a law firm. But it’s not.
The real scoop: Jon Stewart hosts John McCain last week. McCain makes strong statements against the use of torture, and the audience goes beserk in appreciation.
Not everyone was impressed, which led me to investigate the subject further and reach a conclusion, outlined this afternoon at Central Sanity.
Unfortunately, that conclusion is incomplete, and I’m thus in search of some qualified, objective input. If you fit the bill and can help, please chime in. I suspect we’ll all learn something in the process.
I have to say that although I think that McCain blew his chances of winning the nomination quite early on in the race already, I do greatly respect the man. Your “I might vote for him” is duly noted. Can’t argue too passionately with that, although I do think that he is a bit.. overly enthusiastic with regards to Iraq. On the other hand, with him one gets the impression that he supports the surge so passionately because he truly and deeply believes that if Iraq is ‘lost,’ great problems will arise. In other words, he’s honest.
I may not agree with him on everything, but he deserves more support than he is currently receiving. His stance on torture is quite good - he breaks with most Republicans on that one. He truly opposes torture and is willing to break with the conservative base on this issue if necessary. As for your question - I think there was a bit of wishful thinking involved on McCain’s part, and the NYT was perhaps exaggerating it a bit as well. Then again - I’m not a lawyer.
An honest man - at least relatively.
Well I’m not a legal expert; in principle I agree with your argument, and think it doesn’t really apply to this topic. There are tons of rules and regulations (and custom) about what is and is not torture. There is really no need to go back and legislate when our laws have been working well.
Just because the Administration made up an issue doesn’t mean it needs to be addressed. McCain is genuinely against torture and maybe he thought if they passed the bill it would give more guidance and the affected parties would be more willing to tone down their interrogations. But if we do agree that torture is unequivocally wrong, then don’t change the law but go after the people that are breaking it. On the contrary, the bill specifically prohibits invoking Geneva protections and retroactively shields just about everyone from prosecution.
Also, has Bush ever issued guidelines about what is a “grave breach?”
Exactly!
[...] 28th, 2007 by Pete Abel Last week, I asked this site’s readers to consider and chime in on the subject of John McCain’s [...]