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Author Topic: McCain: Torture is OK when it's not done on me.
N.Beltov
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posted 11 March 2008 11:15 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Senator John McCain, the leading Republican contender for the Presidential race, figures torture is OK on others but not on himself.

McCain, who publicly spoke out against "waterboarding" and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, backtracked recently. On Saturday, the Arizona Senator supported the veto by President Bush on a bill banning such techniques.

quote:
Campaign aides said Saturday that McCain believes waterboarding violates both U.S. and international law and is forbidden to all federal agencies. Randy Scheunemann, foreign policy director for McCain's campaign, denied any inconsistency between the senator's record and his position on the bill.

"It's not about waterboarding and it's not about torture," Scheunemann said.

He said McCain opposed the bill for the same reason he exempted the CIA from his 2005 legislation: his belief that the agency should not be limited to methods spelled out in a public Army manual.


It's not torture. If we call it something else then it's not really torture at all.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Left Turn
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posted 11 March 2008 11:36 AM      Profile for Left Turn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What we have here is a discrepancy between McCain's moral position on torture, and his political position on torture.

McCain's moral position appears to be that torture is morally wrong in all cases. However, his political position is that the Army shoudn't be allowed to use torture, but that CIA needs to be allowed to use torture for national security reasons, despite his moral opposition to torture. In other words, he thinks the ends justify the means when it comes to the use of torture by the CIA, but not when it come to its use by the army.

It is an overall position on torture that I find morally abhorrent.

[ 11 March 2008: Message edited by: Left Turn ]


From: Burnaby, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Malcolm
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posted 11 March 2008 10:42 PM      Profile for Malcolm   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Quite apart from the moral issue, torture produces unreliable information. So, even if it weren't wrong, it would still be stupid.
From: Regina, SK | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Bubbles
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posted 11 March 2008 11:19 PM      Profile for Bubbles        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sounds like McCain is reinventing 'rendition'.
From: somewhere | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
Noah_Scape
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posted 12 March 2008 12:17 PM      Profile for Noah_Scape     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ya, this is REALLY bizarre. McCain himself was tortured when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, so it should be expected that he would not be in favor of it. I suppose some victims of torture come out of the ordeal better off than others - many such victims would never be able to do what McCain is doing [being a politician], most just end up as human wreckage.

Also, the idea that if we torture the enemy, then our soldiers will be more likely to be tortured... and alternatively, there could be an agreement between warring factions that torture is not to be used, and if any incidents are found to exist then the deal is off. This would protect the soldiers from torture.

The obvious lesson seen here is that the politicians are not going to be tortured, just the soldiers, and McCain is no longer 'in danger' of being a soldier so it is okay with him if torture exists.

To quote a Pink Floyd lyric: "FORWARD he cried, from the rear, as the front rank died". And so it is that way, still - the lyric referred to WW2. The human race has stagnated in it's goal to become humane.


From: B.C. | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 12 March 2008 12:21 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yea, I should have made it more clear in the opening post that McCain was famous for the claim that he was tortured while a P.O.W..

It was sort of implied in the title, however.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Indiana Jones
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posted 12 March 2008 12:26 PM      Profile for Indiana Jones        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Noah_Scape:
Ya, this is REALLY bizarre. McCain himself was tortured when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, so it should be expected that he would not be in favor of it.

Yeah, that's what makes this really surprising to me. You'd think that someone who had personally experienced it would come out agaisnt it more strongly than anyone else.

It's too bad because McCain would ahve more credibility speaking on it than msot and could be a voice of reason against some of the out-there nutjobs in his party. What a waste.


From: Toronto / Brooklyn / Jerusalem | Registered: Dec 2007  |  IP: Logged
unionist
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posted 12 March 2008 12:30 PM      Profile for unionist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's too bad McCain survived his Vietnam experience. When you let an invading bastard go, you can be sure the mistake will come back to haunt you.
From: Vote QS! | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 12 March 2008 01:06 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
unionist: It's too bad McCain survived his Vietnam experience. When you let an invading bastard go, you can be sure the mistake will come back to haunt you.

That's a "bombing" bastard. According to Wiki, McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing mission over (North) Viet Nam.

In any case, the claims in Wikipedia, presumably verbatim from McCain himself (I expect Wikipedia to be airbrushed by Republicans since McCain is their Presidential Candidate), that McCain was tortured to make false confessions doesn't seem to have sunk into McCain's own thick skull, or anyone else in that cabal of zealots, that JUST PERHAPS US torture of its own victims will have about the same value or merit as the torture that McCain claims he suffered himself.

What's also particularly despicable as well is that the U.S. refused to pay any reparations whatsoever to Viet Nam for the horrors, saturation bombing, chemical weapons, unexploded ordinance, etc., etc., during the failed attempt to "roll back Communism" in that country. Nevertheless, today, Viet Nam has been put into the unenviable position of having to pay the onerous debts of the US puppet regime in South Viet Nam (which collapsed as soon as Uncle Sam fled with his tail between his legs) in order to get access to financial and economic help from the Bretton Woods institutions that the US continues to dominate.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
sgm
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posted 13 April 2008 12:02 AM      Profile for sgm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Amy Goodman writes on a debate among members of the American Psychological Association on participation in 'abusive and coercive interrogations':
quote:
While the other healing professions, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, bar their members from participating in interrogations, the APA leadership has fought against such a restriction.

Frustrated with the APA, a New York psychoanalyst, Dr. Steven Reisner, has thrown his hat into the ring. Last year, Reisner and other dissident psychologists formed the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology in an attempt to force a moratorium against participation by APA members in harsh interrogations. During the initial phase of this year's selection process, Reisner received the most nominating votes. He is running on a platform opposing the use of psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo, secret CIA black sites or anywhere else international law or the Geneva Conventions are said not to apply.

[snip]

When I asked Dr. Reisner, the son of Holocaust survivors, why he would want to head the organization that he has battled for several years, he told me: "If I have this opportunity to make a change, I have a responsibility to do it. I never had the intention of being involved, but the only way to ensure this be changed was by claiming the democratic process in the name of human rights and social-justice issues. I was hoping that mass withholding of dues and mass resignations would shame the APA to come to its senses. It made them take a big step but didn't go far enough."

He expanded: "American people are sick of the reputation of the United States as torturers, as people who abuse prisoners. American people want to see a restoration of values from war to health care. I think what happens in the APA should point to a direction for the whole country."


Any Canadian who has mused publicly about allowing certain 'coercive interrogation' techniques as 'lesser evils' in so-called 'exceptional cases' might do well to take note of this debate within the APA.

From: I have welcomed the dawn from the fields of Saskatchewan | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 13 April 2008 02:28 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Why I Resigned From The APA

Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice

[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 13 April 2008 03:50 PM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by unionist:
It's too bad McCain survived his Vietnam experience.

It seems you've been very negative lately.

That's a terrible thing to say.


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
BetterRed
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posted 13 April 2008 06:25 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by 500_Apples:

It seems you've been very negative lately.

That's a terrible thing to say.


Maybe so. But at least he's not caught up in the moment, confident that with Obama's 'imminent' election, US will become the righteous Camelot


From: They change the course of history, everyday ppl like you and me | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 16 June 2008 10:15 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators

- video and audio links to a forum presentation May 3, 2008

Psychologists and Interrogations - links to key articles


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 16 June 2008 01:15 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
How does anyone know for sure what their torture methods are at Gitmo Bay, Cuba, Abu, Eastern Europe and Central Asia? I've been to Cuba, but

I've never seen or heard of any civilians nor Cubans being allowed into Camp X-Ray to view freedom American style first-hand and up close. Why do democratizers have to be so secretive about these things?


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 21 June 2008 07:08 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Sen. John McCain, who recently shelved his opposition to torture by voting against a bill banning the use of torture by the CIA, compounded his desperate lunge for the Hard Right vote by declaring that last Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, granting constitutional habeas corpus rights to the prisoners at Guantánamo, was “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
...

On Sunday, in the first story to throw serious doubt on John McCain’s rhetoric, McClatchy Newspapers published the results of an eight-month investigation into the stories of 66 of the 501 prisoners released from Guantánamo, which demonstrated why the Supreme Court was correct to intervene in the cases of the prisoners. In an article introducing the profiles, lead researcher Tom Lasseter wrote that “the dozens of separate tales merge into one: Arrests -- often without real evidence -- brutality and mistreatment in US interrogations, years of their lives spent behind prison-camp wire in a system of justice that no American citizen would recognize.”
...

Further proof of the administration’s descent into barbarism came on Tuesday, when it was revealed that an investigation by the Senate Committee on Armed Services into “The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques” has discovered that senior Pentagon officials began planning to use abusive tactics at Guantánamo Bay in July 2002, three months earlier than has been previously acknowledged. The plan involved borrowing tactics from the military training program known as Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE), whose aim is to teach US soldiers counter-interrogation techniques by subjecting them, in controlled circumstances, to torture techniques including waterboarding (controlled drowning), sleep deprivation, forced nudity, sexual and religious humiliation, and forced standing in painful “stress positions.”

Speaking as the story broke, Sen. Carl Levin, the committee’s chairman, said, “How did it come about that American military personnel stripped detainees naked, put them in stress positions, used dogs to scare them, put leashes around their necks to humiliate them, hooded them, deprived them of sleep, and blasted music at them. Were these actions the result of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own? It would be a lot easier to accept if it were. But that's not the case. The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees.


Source

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 22 June 2008 10:30 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Hundreds of churches located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will display an anti-torture banner during the month of June to voice their opposition to U.S.-sponsored torture, announced a religious group on Thursday.

The “Banners Across America” initiative, organized by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, is taking place in conjunction with other interfaith public witnessing during Torture Awareness Month in June.


I especially enjoyed reading the comments posted at the end of this article by bloodthirsty Christians who support torture.

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 23 September 2008 10:48 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Psychologists Reject the Dark Side:
quote:
The movement against U.S. torture experienced a significant victory last week. The members of the American Psychological Association [APA] rejected the policies of their leadership, policies that abetted the Bush administration's program of torture and detainee abuse. By a vote of 59%, the members passed a referendum stating that APA members may not work in U.S. detention centers that are outside of or in violation of international law or the U.S. Constitution "unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights." Passage of this referendum is a significant milestone in a years long effort by activist psychologists to change policies that encouraged participation in detainee interrogations because psychologists, the APA leadership claimed, helped keep those interrogations "safe, legal, and ethical."

Since 2004, news reports and government documents have provided evidence of the central role of psychologists in designing, implementing, and disseminating the administrations' program of abusive interrogations, whether conducted by the CIA in its secret "black sites" or by the Defense Department at Guantánamo, and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged

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