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Opinion: McCain’s red shift on torture

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On the unpopular war with Iraq, Sen. John McCain says he is ‘prepared to sacrifice whatever was necessary in order to stand up for what I believe in.’ Torture is pretty unpopular, so you’d think it’d be a helluva lot easier for the former POW to stick to his guns on the issue.

And you’d be wrong:

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It’s a mighty fine line to walk. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opposes torture. But when the Senate held a vote yesterday that would effectively prevent the CIA from employing torture by restricting interrogation techniques to those under the Army Field Manual, he voted against it ... But by voting against the bill, McCain is saying that the CIA should have a free hand to employ techniques along these lines. At the same time, he stresses that the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act, the bill he himself sponsored, prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment and treatment that ‘shocks the conscience.’ He hasn’t said which of the techniques listed above meet that description. But he trusts that the Justice Department and CIA will arrive at a ‘good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible.’

Of course, all candidates pander, and it’s expected that much of what anyone running for president does is tinged with cynicism. Indeed, McCain needs to endear himself to the GOP’s conservative base fast. But as my former boss Matt Welch points out in his book, McCain has spent practically his entire political career carefully crafting his image of honor and integrity. And this is torture, for crying out loud -- something which McCain himself endured for more than five years in Vietnam.

With McCain’s most recent flip-flop, perhaps it’ll become clear how genuine his aura of honor and integrity is.

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