Talking the Talk
UPDATED THREE TIMES
Cernig argues for the Newshoggers that although John McCain talks the anti-torture talk, he doesn’t – yet – walk the anti-torture walk. The reason: he “voted against a bill tie the CIA and other civilain intelligence agencies to techniques allowed by the Army Field Manual,” even though he “added a ban on torture to a defense spending bill in 2005.”
And then, when asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes whether or not waterboarding is torture he answered: “Sure, yes, without a doubt. We prosecuted Japanese war criminals after World War II, and one of the charges brought against them, for which they were convicted, was that they waterboarded Americans.”
That’s true, but one wonders why he, then, voted against the bill mentioned by Cernig. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is; Cernig accuses the Senator of flip-flopping, but it seems to me that there could have been another, and valid, reason for McCain to vote against aforementioned bill.
As it is, though, it has to be said that McCain – if he wants to earn the respect of people both in the US and abroad – has to walk the anti-torture walk, as well as talk the anti-torture talk. Talking isn’t going to do it. The US should outlaw torture – as it is required to do according to international law – immediately. Waterboarding is torture and not outlawing it does great damage to America’s image abroad. Some Republicans underestimate the impact this issue has on the perception of people abroad.
The first thing the next president of the US should do – if he or she wants to restore the image of America – is to outlaw torture, and thus waterboarding.
UPDATE: It seems I was right. McCain did have other, and valid, reasons to vote against the bill Cernig talks about:
McCain was adamant that he wasn’t reneging on his belief that waterboarding is illegal under a law he sponsored in 2005 prohibiting “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” of prisoners in U.S. custody. With waterboarding off the table, in McCain’s view, there’s nothing wrong with allowing CIA interrogators to use other methods not available to the military. Although McCain wasn’t specific about what those might be, the Army Field Manual bans subjecting prisoners to sleep deprivation, painful “stress positions” or extreme temperatures, or using dogs to intimidate them…
McCain opposed this legislation because it’s simply a badly-written bill that hands a training manual to our enemies. It’s not just unnecessary, it damages our ability to glean information by limiting our options and allowing our enemies to prepare for American interrogation.
Thanks to Christine Stanley.
UPDATE II: I e-mailed Cernig, and he e-mailed me back with this link.
Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment that would (1) establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and (2) prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in the detention of the U.S. government.
Perhaps there’s something to the flip-flop charge?
UPDATE III: just because I enjoy messing with your heads, Christine Stanley comments:
More clarification on that point from Ed Morrissey here.
Money quote which rebuts what Cernig is asserting:
Just because a method doesn’t make it into the AFM doesn’t mean that it’s torture under international convention.
IOW, you have the AFM methods. Then you have other methods which would not be out of bounds of our treaty obligations and international conventions, but which might not be permissible in the AFM (because of different circumstances) but McCain thinks the CIA should be allowed to use (without detailing it to our enemies in advance.) Then there’s the third set of actions which are out of bounds- which are defined as those that are disallowed by international law and treaties that we’ve signed onto.
If one wonders, Michael, then one ought to investigate a bit before acting as though the question hasn’t already been answered.
Thanks for the link Christine and… aren’t we grumpy suddenly.
Thanks for the update- and no, not grumpy, just hoping to help provide feedback to keep up the standards around here.
In that case you should have given a link to a completely different subject, preferably even about an entirely different country.
Or you should have made a joke about Catholics.
Michael, that link is crucial because, although the amendment he backed applied only to DoD interrogations, not CIA or other civilain intelligence agencies, he also says that the AFM is sufficient to provide all interrogation techniques and the only standard in keeping with what America means.
I would note, as has McCain in the past, that the other techniques banned by the AFM but allowed to the CIA are all torture techniques according to international treaties to which the U.S. is a signator. In his Statement to the Senate, McCain said:
"The second part of this amendment is a prohibition against cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. If that doesn’t sound new, that’s because it’s not – the prohibition has been a longstanding principle in both law and policy in the United States. To mention just a few examples, this prohibition is contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. is a signatory; and the binding Convention Against Torture, negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the Senate.Nevertheless, the administration has held that the prohibition does not legally apply to foreigners held overseas. They can, apparently, be treated inhumanely. This means that America is the only country in the world that asserts a legal right to engage in cruel and inhumane treatment. What this also means is that confusion about the rules becomes rampant again. With this simple amendment, we can restore clarity on a simple and fundamental question: Does America treat people inhumanely? My answer is no, and from all I’ve seen, America’s answer has always been no."
It’s a clear flip-flop in intent, any attempts to parse it notwithstanding.
Regards, C
Which is not the same as CIA detainees. Hence no flip flop.
More clarification on that point from Ed Morrissey here.
Money quote which rebuts what Cernig is asserting:
IOW, you have the AFM methods. Then you have other methods which would not be out of bounds of our treaty obligations and international conventions, but which might not be permissible in the AFM (because of different circumstances) but McCain thinks the CIA should be allowed to use (without detailing it to our enemies in advance.) Then there’s the third set of actions which are out of bounds- which are defined as those that are disallowed by international law and treaties that we’ve signed onto.
Just because Ed says so doesn’t rebut a thing.
In his 2005 statement, McCain mentions Gitmo as one of the places where torture and scandal could have been avoided if only the AFM had been followed.
Regards, C
Shall I make it clearer? The bill McCain sponsored back in 2005 extended the AFM to cover all DoD interrogations precisely because, by McCain’s own logic back then, everything the AFM banned was in fact torture under international treaties. All would be judged torture if practised by US cops on US felons, for example. McCain argued back then – as I quoted – that the Bush administration had gone outside the law in creating a situation where the rule of law did not apply equally to all.
His current position is a closely-parsed flip on that original one. He’s using words like a Phillie lawyer.
Regards, C
You mean this part of McCain’s statement?:
He was clearly talking about the interrogation methods used by SOLDIERS, not CIA officers there (Abu Graib was a DOD facility, as is most of Gitmo- though there is a CIA camp within the overall camp there.)
Why would the bill, and McCain’s speech, have gone on with part II (about affirming that our standards would conform to international law) if he strictly wanted to use the AFM as the guide for the military AND the CIA? If that’s what he was advocating, he could have stopped at part I, no need for anything else (since the AFM already had that covered.)
So, everything banned in the AFM would then also apply to the CIA- but the AFM could not possibly have defined every action that wasn’t specifically sanctioned as torture- instead, it described a certain set of specific actions as torture (and therefore impermissible.)
It’s the ambiguity of the nonlisted, non-torture actions that McCain wants to reserve the right for the CIA to use, even though the military is prohibited from entering into that ambiguous territory.
You can agree or disagree, but there’s no question in my mind that he has been consistent on this. You perhaps read more into his original statements that made them more in congruity with your own views.