John McCain Flip-Flops On Waterboarding

Late on Wednesday, by a vote of 51-45, the Senate passed an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization bill that prohibits any US agency from using interrogation techniques incompatible with the Army Field Manual. The idea was to expressly outlaw waterboarding and other forms of torture that the Bush administration has claimed a right to utilize.

One of the no-votes was Republican presidential frontrunner John McCain, who (as you may have heard once or twice) was himself tortured while a POW in Vietnam. Ostensibly, McCain voted against the measure because he opposes applying the Army Field Manual's rules to the CIA:

I said on the Senate floor during the debate over the Military Commissions Act, “Let me state this flatly: it was never our purpose to prevent the CIA from detaining and interrogating terrorists. On the contrary, it is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to do so. At the same time, the CIA’s interrogation program has to abide by the rules, including the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act.” This remains my view today.

There's just one slight problem with this justification. The McCain Amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill of October 2005 prohibited all US personnel from engaging in torture or any other "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" anywhere on earth. Only later did disgraced Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens carve out a loophole for the CIA. (If you're unfamiliar with Sen. Stevens' career, imagine a love child of Boss Tweed and Grampa Simpson.)

So when John McCain first proposed his torture ban, his position was 180 degrees away from what he now claims he has believed all along. Nor was his evolution on the permissibility of torture a gradual one. As recently as late November, McCain excoriated Mitt Romney for entertaining the idea of permitting waterboarding and was righteously indignant at the thought of abrogating the Geneva Conventions.

Why the flip-flop? Could it have anything to do with the Republican base's loathing of McCain for his opposition to torture? No way: that's fearless, straight-shootin' John McCain we're talking about, the senator who'll never tell a lie or compromise his fundamental principles for political gain.

To be fair to McCain, after the Defense Authorization bill was signed with his amendment intact, President Bush reserved the right to disregard any provision of the new law at all. McCain didn't make much of a fuss. So perhaps his position has been consistent all along: alternately taking self-righteous stands against torture when the cameras are pointed at him, then walking back any moral commitments so that he can toe the party line, but no matter what, always advancing the career of John McCain.