Now if you read H.R. 2082 it does not say that waterboarding (a type of physical interrogation that some have said is torture) is banned. But what it does say is that only the interrogation techniques contained in the Army Field Manual are authorized for use. Waterboarding is not in that manual. Be that as it may I am against McCain’s stance that waterboarding is torture and it is an effective interrogation technique to be used only on high level prisoners.
John McCain has been against waterboarding and has spoken out in favor of the Army Field Manual in the past…
“I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and Jack Bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. And I just came back from visiting a prison in Iraq. The army general there said that techniques under the army field manual are working and working effectively, and he didn’t think they need to do anything else. My friends, this is what America is all about.”
He was against it before he was for it. Virtually all Democrats voted in favor of the bill and Republicans voted against the bill. So Did McCain cave in and decide to play along with the Republicans and now favor it? Is he now pandering to party conservatives? What happened to his principles? But his Democratic opponents don’t have any room to talk… unlike Clinton and Obama, at least McCain had the brass to show up and vote.
This legislation, which President Bush has vowed to veto, bars the CIA (or another other government agency) from using waterboarding, sensory deprivation, hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes, cannot be stripped naked or forced to perform or mimic sexual acts, cannot be beaten, electrocuted, burned or otherwise physically hurt, cannot be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions nor allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Also dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.
All of the above practices were banned by the military in 2006 and The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 prohibited cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for all detainees in U.S. custody, including CIA prisoners. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden did testify before Congress February 5th that waterboarding had been used successfully in 2002-2003 on three high value prisoners… Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks; Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative tied to the Sept. 11 plot; and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi suspected of playing a key role in the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
My personal opinion is that waterboarding should be legal as long as the procedure requires the consent of the Attorney General and the President on a case-by-case basis… which was the case back in 2002-2003. We are talking about this procedure used against the worst of the worst for the security of our country (and perhaps other countries as well).
If you don’t like the punishment… don’t do the crime.
Filed under: 2008 Elections, Military, Terrorism
“If you don’t like the punishment… don’t do the crime.??” Not everyone who gets waterboard or genitally electrocuted by the CIA or other US personnel is guilty of anything. Have you not been keeping up with how some of the detained got into gitmo? Turned in by foreign sources for a bounty, leaving the US to keep someone whose crime might have been pissing someone else off. We got played, and the poor saps caught in the middle get tortured.