Does John McCain Support Torture?

Talk is cheap, especially in an Orwellian world. We all know that George Bush can stare into a camera and declare “we not not torture” without flinching. John McCain has been adamant in the past about his opposition to torture. And to be fair, he was at one time a hero in the Republican party on this issue, opposing waterboarding, and introducing the “McCain amendment” under which (i) detainees under the department of defense could be subject only to interrogation techniques listed in the Army Field Manual; (ii) no person under the custody of the US government, no matter the agency or location could be subjected to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” This was not uncontroversial, as the Bush administration and allies pushed for a CIA exemption. In the end, Bush issued a signing statement intended to weaken this act.

In 2008, there was an attempt to close the CIA loophole once and for all. A “Feinstein amendment” declared that all agencies of the U.S. government, not just the military, must conduct interrogations in line with the Army Field Manual. In essence, it codifies what many saw as the intent of the McCain amendment, preventing the Bush administration from outsourcing its dirty work to the CIA. And here’s the amazing thing: John McCain voted against this amendment. As Marty Lederman put it: “Senator McCain Condemns Torture — But Votes Against the Bill That Would Prevent It”.

McCain issued a detailed statement to explain himself. He basically argued that the original legislation “allowed the CIA to retain the capacity to employ alternative interrogation techniques”. Of course, he noted, these techniques could not constitute “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment”, which included waterboarding. Case closed. But there is a problem. We all know what techniques the CIA has been using, and waterboarding is but one of them. As Marty Lederman notes, “Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of otherof its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation.” These techniques also happen to include some of the treatments meted out to McCain by his captors in Vietnam. By his own logic, therefore, he was not tortured.

In conclusion, despite his clear stance in earlier years, McCain’s descent into “crazy base world” (as he admitted to John Stewart) entails a refusal to vote against torture. And that is on the record, and gives him clear proximity to the evil acts conducted by the CIA. The rest is just semantics.