McCain Takes Bold Stance On Torture: ‘We Cannot Ever Torture Any American’»

Today, during the question-and-answer period of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) address to the Associated Press, a journalist asked McCain about torturing terrorism detainees, saying “Don’t we stand for something better?” McCain seemed to get confused, talking instead about his opposition to the torture of Americans:
I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act…And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.

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Of course, the question had nothing to do with torturing Americans, something no American would support. The question was about how Americans should treat detainees in the war on terror — an issue McCain has hardly been “very clear” on.
As he did today, McCain has condemned waterboarding in the past. He has called it a “horrible torture technique” and a “terrible and odious practice” that “should never be condoned in the U.S.” Yet in February, McCain voted against a bill banning the CIA from using torture, specifically including waterboarding.
When the bill passed, McCain encouraged Bush to veto it — effectively supporting the CIA’s use of “stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation.”
The only thing McCain has been “very clear” on is his completely uncontroversial — and completely irrelevant — opposition to the torturing of Americans. Like Bush, will McCain claim that “America does not torture” and yet condone torture behind closed doors?