I'll have to give host Bob Schieffer credit for actually using the word "torture" straightforwardly, which is still a bit touchy for the Villagers. Notice the generous lead-in that Schieffer gives him, because the idea that McCain is a Maverick who opposed torture - opposing torture would make someone a maverick in today's Republican Party:
BOB SCHIEFFER: Good morning again. And Senator McCain is in the studio with us. We begin with him. Senator, when the President decided to put out these memos outlining the interrogation methods that the previous administration used, he apparently intended to put them out, say we’ll never do it again, and thought that would be the end of it. It has been far from that. He has really opened a can of worms. You were among the first to condemn torture as a use for interrogator. You said it didn’t work. It put our own people in jeopardy of having the enemy use it on them. You were very, very strong about that. But now you say, we should not have an investigation into this, that the-- we should move on. Why have you decided on that?The fact that anyone pretends that passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 did anything to end torture in the Bush Gulag is astonishing to me, though it shouldn't be knowing how broken-down the Establishment press is. On the issue of torture, what did the Act do? There may be nuances of it that attorneys of human rights activists familiar in more detail with the relevant laws would notice that I wouldn't. But the basic point is painfully clear, and always was: the Act once again outlawed torture which was illegal already. Seriously, big-time, major-league illegal. So if Cheney and Bush were disobeying existing laws and treaties on torture, it was nothing but political Kabuki theater to pretend they would obey a new one. If the bold Maverick had been serious about stopping torture, he would have insisted on real Congressional investigations into the actual practice and investigations into why the Justice Department wasn't meeting its legal duty on investigating and prosecuting torture crimes.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (Ranking, Armed Services Committee): First of all let me repeat what you just said, Bob. I have opposed torture. It's violation of the Geneva Conventions. I worry about treatment of Americans in future conflicts. But a very brief story; Senator Lindsey Graham and I were at Camp Bucca. Twenty thousand Iraqis were held prisoner there. We met with a former high-ranking member of al Qaeda. I said to him-- I said, “How did you succeed? What-- what is the recipe for your success?” He said, “Two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion.” There was no order whatsoever. He said, “Second, Abu Ghraib.” He said, “We were able to recruit thousands of young men into our cause because of Abu Ghraib.” So have no doubt about my feeling about that. And we did pass the Detainee Treat-- Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel inhumane and degrading treatment. But-- so we are where we are. [my emphasis]
It really is a bad joke to pretend that support for the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 meant anything at all in the way of preventing torture. On the contrary. That same act authorized a new set of special military tribunals that turned out in practice to be useless, and which was a horrible evasion of the problem that Cheney and Bush were trying to set up a parallel system outside the regular civilian and military justice systems. And it also limited the right of torture victims to appeal to the federal courts! So, it outlawed torture, which was already outlawed. And made it harder for the victims to get any redress from the courts to stop torture or appeal their confinement. You would think even Bob Shieffer could understand that supporting that bill was anything but being "very, very strong" in opposing torture.
At this point in the discussion of the torture program, a discussion that has moved forward rapidly in the last week, it's important to keep in mind the shifting rationale of torture defenders. There's the all-out Cheney defense. And there's the more "moderate" version that says, oh, torture was bad and we're glad the policy has changed but we should never, ever, pursue criminal investigations against the civilians involved in this thing. And for the torture defenders, not prosecuting the perpetrators from the Cheney-Bush years is really the key thing. The "refer to a bipartisan commission" is mainly just a defense to avoid prosecution.
One matter that seems to get little discussion in relation to this topic is the senior military officers who had to have collaborated to some extent with the torture being performed at Gitmo, Bagram and elsewhere. Even with the Abu Ghuraib scandal, senior officers were largely spared court-martials. Lower-ranking troops, however, have been court-martialed or tried in civilian courts for torture-related offenses, though their sentences seem to tend toward the lenient side. But neither civilians nor military officers that were involved in torture should escape investigation and prosecution.
There are serious people who have a great record in opposing torture like Scott Horton who still support a truth commission as part of the way to deal with the torture issue. But Sen. Patrick Leahy's idea of a truth commission so far has specifically included immunity from prosecution for everyone who testifies before the commission. I actually think we need to get away from this idea that for problems like this that you need some special bipartisan commission to investigate. We have a Justice Department whose job it is to investigate and prosecute crimes. If the Justice Department even under Bush could successfully prosecute Scooter Libby, Eric Holder's Justice Department can prosecute the torture cases. And Congress has standing Committees that have full investigatory powers. The "bipartisan commission" gambit on the torture crimes would almost certainly have the result of facilitate a de facto amnesty for torture perpetrators. And by insisting on a bipartisan composition (which Congressional Committees already have) for a special commission, it would encourage the notion that what is being investigated is a policy matter, not a serious crime.
And McCain carefully avoids that distinction, as well. His next comments reflect a real urgency to make the issue of prosecution for civilians over the torture program go away as quickly as possible:
But-- so we are where we are. There has been an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. There is-- it is well-known what-- what happened. There is-- there is going to be pictures that are going to be coming out, which will again authenticate that wrong things are done.That's our media's favorite Maverick! In one breath, he brags about his sponsorship of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Then in almost literally the next breath, he argues emphatically that neither that nor any other anti-torture law should actually be enforced against people who violated it. In PunditWorld, that counts as mavericky.
But are you going to prosecute people for giving bad legal advice? Are you going to keep on down this road in order, frankly, to-- maybe there's an element of settling old political scores here. We need to put this behind us. We need to move forward. We may-- we've made a commitment that we will never do this again. No administration I believe would ever do this again. And it's time to fight the wars that we’re in.
We’re not done in Iraq by a long shot and Afghanistan has very, very great difficulties. We need a united nation not a divided one.
Finally, you were around when President Ford pardoned President Nixon. There were allegations of criminal activity on the part of the President of the United States. Most people in retrospect believe that the Fo-- Ford pardon was right because we moved on. We got to move on.
He does seem to be saying later in the interview that he thinks the Cheney-Bush torture program violated the Geneva Conventions. But that functions as a meaningless verbal concession to the law-and-order position, while he actually argues strongly for the pro-torture, no-prosecutions position.
The current Republican Party line of shaking their heads in real or feigned amazement that the Justice Department might "prosecute people for giving bad legal advice" is particularly disingenuous, which is not to say that our Pod Pundits can get past it. On the PBS Newshour of 04/24/09, in which Mark Shields managed to do a tolerably good job of talking about the issue, even making the point emphatically that we're talking about illegal acts, Brooks relayed the Party line: "Are you going to prosecute people who wrote legal memos? Is that illegal now?"
This is just deception for people who really want to be deceived. Giving legal advice for the purpose of facilitating the commission of crimes is in itself a crime. And, ironically, because the government attorneys involved documented what they did and how they argued, the legal case against them may be the strongest of all.
Then the Maverick who, according to Schieffer, has been "very, very strong" in his opposition to torture, says:
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about this, Vice President Cheney says he wants more of these documents made public so the public will understand that these interrogation methods worked.Now, the plain meaning of those words is that McCain Cheney's argument for torture a legitimate policy difference. But who knows? We can scarcely expect his press fanboys like Bob Schieffer are going to press him on such seemingly contradictory points. Also, I assume by "extreme talk show hosts" he means Air America and/or Keither Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, as you know, the vice president and I had strongly disagreed on the fundamentals of this issue. But the vice president of the United States has the right to weigh in on this discussion if he wants to. After all, it's-- it's the decision--
BOB SCHIEFFER: (Overlapping) But do you agree with him?
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: No. I-- I don’t think it's necessary to be honest with you. But if the vice president feels it's necessary then I think he's entitled. And when-- and when extreme talk show hosts say that he wants another attack on the United States, I-- I think that’s shameful.
But he's the Maverick!
Tags: barack obama, mccain, torture
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