McCain: Bybee Violated The Law, But It Was Just ‘Very Bad Advice’

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeated his view that the United States had conducted torture by authorizing waterboarding. Saying the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times was "unacceptable," McCain declared, "One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period."
However, discussing torture on CBS's Face the Nation today, McCain insisted, "We've got to move on" and ignore the Bush administration's torture program. Indeed, McCain refused to support the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee -- even as he acknowledged that Bybee had broken both U.S. and international law in authorizing torture:
MCCAIN: He falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting, fundamentally, what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Look, under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture. We were in violation of that.
McCain claimed that "no one has alleged, quote, wrongdoing" on the part of Bush administration lawyers, only that they had given "bad advice." And yet minutes later McCain himself acknowledged that Bybee's advice led the U.S. to be "in violation" of both U.S. and international law. Watch it:

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Podesta Calls For Bybee Impeachment On CNN, Delivers Your Petitions To Congress »

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union this morning, Center for American Progress Action Fund President and CEO John Podesta called on Congress to commence impeachment hearings against Jay Bybee, should he decide not to voluntarily resign his seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Podesta said:
The one thing I disagree with you and David [Gergen] about is I do think there's a distinction between going back and prosecuting in criminal courts the actors who were involved in these memos and letting Judge Bybee continue to sit on a court one step removed from the Supreme Court. He's acting and listening to cases, making judgments of others, and we know he authorized things that were illegal under U.S. law and violated the U.S. obligations under international treaties.
If he would do the right thing, he should just simply resign. If he doesn't, I think this is one matter where he continues to sit -- he doesn't have the moral or legal authority to continue to do that. And I think a simple matter would be to remove him from office.

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