John McCain feels "the world's" pain

There we go again, with our usual beauty in unexpected places.  This time, the afternoon sun streaming in the studio window, with L.L. Bean Bay Blue "Wicked good fleece throw" on a director's chair (upper left), rya rug right and the edges of our L.L. Bean red Trail Model Fleece Jacket snaking in lower left. Tiny was just off camera to the left, recharging her batteries on the fleece throw.

John McCain, with his "torture ban," feels the world's pain. Unfortunately, he doesn't feel ours. He is, in fact, the source of our pain. First it was McCain-Feingold -- the so-called campaign-finance-reform bill that left only the media and the MoveOn.org types it spawned with a soap box in the last few days prior to an election. Then crept in the possibility that blogs plugging a candidate might fall under the jackboot of McCain-Feingold. No wonder the MSM loves McCain so much. Power is where it's at, and to those who sense they're losing it in spades to these upstart pajama types, unprincipled politicians who would shore up the media's waning power for their own nefarious ends become their lifeline:

The McCain ["torture ban"] Amendment provides that no prisoner held by the Defense Department "shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation." That manual expressly forbids any use of force, coercion or intimidation in conducting questioning, even if such tactics fall short of torture, even if the prisoner is a terrorist guilty of war crimes, and even in a matter of life-and-death -- perhaps thousands of deaths.

The NYT's impeach-early-and-often offering yesterday is but the latest pathetic attempt by the little people to hobble the Leader of the Free World. It is the way of the world. As Ben Stein said on Fox News yesterday, this president is poised to go down in history as one of the great, visionary enablers of change in this world of sin, and it's got the Defeatocrats eating their hearts out. Mangia, mangia!

Comments

[Tara]

What I cannot understand is how Libby gets indicted over the Plame non-issue and the New York Times can print ths stuff which could mean life or death and the liberals want to blame Bush.

Whoever leaked this to the Times, and it has to be someone within the intel agencies intent on undermining and destroying Bush, should be prosecuted.

[goomp]

I am afraid McCain is just another lightweight as are so many of our pols. No real understanding of the issues but an almost insane need to seem important.

[Barry Campbell]

Sorry, Sissy, but I've got to disagree with you on one point: McCain, who unlike anyone in the current Administration actually knows a little something about torture, has the correct position on this issue. (I'm no fan of his campaign finance reform law, but I'll back him to the hilt on his anti-torture stance.)

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky wrote an incredibly powerful piece in today's Washington Post, on the subject of torture as public policy. I tried to link to it, but your software seems to be stripping links out of comments; you can find the article ("Torture's Long Shadow") by going to the Washington Post homepage, or by visiting my blog (click on my name.)

Bukovsky, incidentally, is nobody's bleeding heart and is as rock-ribbed and solid an ideological conservative as you're ever likely to find anywhere; in fact, he's conservative in a way that only someone who spent over a decade being tortured by Communists could be.

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks, Barry, for the comments and Bukovsky's article, but I go back to McCain and his cynical attempts to cast himself as the moral conscience of us all. Check out -- you probably have already, last month -- this Mark Bowden op ed from Opinion Journal for where I'm coming from:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007539

"The provision offers nothing new or even controversial. Cruel treatment of prisoners is already banned. It is prohibited by military law and by America's international agreements. American citizens are protected by the Constitution. I see no harm in reiterating our national revulsion for it, and maybe adding even a redundant layer of legal verbiage will help redress the damage done to our country by pictures from Abu Ghraib and reports of widespread prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. One thing it will not do, sadly, is stop the abuse of prisoners."

[Barry Campbell]

Sissy -

Again, I respectfully disagree. The McCain Amendment did two important things: first, it set a uniform standard for interrogation of prisoners under the effective control of DoD - that standard being the Army field manual on interrogation - and made this standard applicable to *all* interrogators, be they CIA officers or civilian contractors. That was a much-needed clarification, in my opinion.

Second, it sets a clear policy statement going forward that the United States will neither sponsor nor condone torture.

I saw the WSJ piece; in the battle of the pundits, I'll see your Mark Bowden and raise you a Victor Davis Hanson:

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120505.html

"[W]e might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the United Nations appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good.

But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment — because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals. The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies."

[beautifulatrocities]

He's a coward. When the Arizona legislature passed a bill requiring voter ID, the Dem governor vetoed it (because illegal aliens are seen as possible Dem voters). So Arizonans responded with a ballot measure, which McCain refused to endorse, afraid of offending the mythical Hispanic street

[Scott]

I'm with Sissy on this one, but I have to say that Barry's excerpt from the Victor Davis Hansen article manages to perfectly capture both sides of the debate to the point that both would use it as a rallying point - a sign of excellent writing.

"[W]e might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the United Nations appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good."

==> To me that's game, set and match (or however it goes) - a perfect summary of my reasons for opposing McCain's bill, but all of this is seen as being less important than the following in the eyes of the bill's supporters:

"But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment — because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals. The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies."

==> To me this second paragraph should fall under the "suicide pact" warning made popular after 9/11 in re: our Constitution and how it applies to the WOT, but for supporters of McCain's bill this is their game/set/match section.

And that is an extremely fundemental disconnect - those two positions are like the irresistible force vs the immovable object; no reconciling them no matter how much either side reasons, restates or cherry picks.

In the end, it's just sad that we have to choose between security and values.