It looks to me like McCain traded this vote for the President’s endorsement. That may clinch the party nomination for him, but Democrats will find it easier to continue to campaign against the current administration. I for one no longer believe McCain’s promise to wage war differently.

Yep. It was a favorite Kmer Rouge technique.

“It used to be that such things weren’t even a matter of discussion.”

I remembered reading about Isreali use of stress positions, etc. in college and thinking that it was good to live in a country that recognized that there is no such thing as acceptable physical / mental abuse of prisoners.

Oh well.

I agree that McCain didn’t vote for waterboarding. But he did vote against the provision that would make at least that list of techniques (including waterboarding) specifically illegal. That’s different from voting to make them legal, of course. It’s only now that anyone is admitting that 1) we have used this torture technique and 2) it is in fact illegal, at least now it is.

Did you know that the US has charged others with war crimes for the use of waterboarding? Just a little-remembered fact.

Why our international agreements somehow cease to matter under this administration is of course another matter entirely. It used to be that such things weren’t even a matter of discussion.

This is arguably one of McCain’s deepest-felt convictions, and one that is informed by direct experience. That he could condone torture in any form for the sake of pandering to the right wing says that his integrity is gone. And if that’s not selling your soul, what is?

It would be like me using my talents in order to write persuasive talking points for fundamentalists, or for Halliburton, or the oil companies. If I did that, I’d be selling my soul.

I know why he is doing it, and in a certain way I understand. But the one thing I always said about McCain is that at least we know he’d never condone torture. What kind of a man would turn his back on that? A very very ambitious one, to be sure, but one that I also feel has lost his way. This could have been a defining characteristic – the conservative that won’t sell out American values. Instead?

You could certainly argue that McCain sold his soul by voting to authorize a CIA program using the disorientation techniques, which in some ways may be worse than physical torture – basically, the goal is to make you psychotic. All I am saying is that he is not voting for waterboarding.

It’s frustrating that they’ve been able to frame the discussion in terms of parsing whether specific techniques are or are not torture, but here we are.

There are still 19 approved interrogation techniques in the military field manual, including things like good cop/bad cop, false flag (making prisoners think they are in the custody of another country) – and the isolation of a prisoner from other prisoners for up to 30 days at a time.

The measure was included as an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization bill, which was approved today by the Senate.

The provision reads:

No individual in the custody or under the effective control of an element of the intelligence community or instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.

It specifically requires the CIA and all other U.S. intelligence agencies to follow the Army Field Manual’s protocols on interrogations.

The Army Field Manual specifically prohibits eight interrogation techniques:

• Forcing a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, pose in sexual manner;
• Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee, duct tape over the eyes;
• Beatings, electric shock, burns or other forms of physical pain;
• Waterboarding;
• Use of military working dogs;
• Introducing hypothermia or heat injury;
• Conducting mock executions; and
• Depriving detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care.

So explain to me why McCain isn’t selling his soul here?

Here’s the deal. They have stopped waterboarding. They refuse to say if it is or ever was legal, all they will say is that it is no longer part of the “enhanced interrogation program.” So the argument here is really about stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc. I have not heard McCain making any definitive statement about the legality of this stuff, although he has told moving stories about his own experiences and the experiences of his fellow POWs with similar techniques.