Watch McCain Flip Flop On Waterboarding

So much for Sen. John McCain being a man of principle who stood up to the Bush Administration and fellow Republicans. Turns out, he too is just another politician hungry for votes.

On Wednesday McCain voted against a Senate bill that would ban waterboarding and all forms of physical interrogation methods used by the CIA against terror suspects. The Senate passed the bill 51 to 45.

But McCain was singing a different tune only a few months ago. Watch McCain decry waterboarding and take Mitt Romney to task here.

Read more here on Pop and Politics.

Comments

[turnpiketramp]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/14/america/intel.php

Here are his comments. Any reason why Hilary and Obama did not vote?

If the bill supported the Military Commissions Act of 2006 ---(Sec. 326) Requires a report from the DNI to the defense and intelligence committees on measures taken by the DNI and each IC element to comply with provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and related provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. HOW could it be anti-aggressive techniques?

[writerforhire]

I think, and am only guided my knowledge, beliefs and media information, that the waterboarding bill should be modified. Allowed and modified. I, like every American, stand in horror when I see footage of every car bombing, every Hammas solider dedicated to the demise of the Great Satan America, bombed out building, fragmented, torn bodies lying in the blood filled streets. We live in a free society I want to keep it that way. I don't want terrorist at my back door or even a cell group hiding at a church in NYC, LA, Miami or anywhere else.

[mari2JJ]

The idea of the US condoning waterboarding is not even in agreement with the international agreement that WE SIGNED. To participate in that activity breaks every rule we have subscribed to in the Geneva Convention and besides, it is not productive as Mr. McCain has repeated so many times. When he was tortured in Vietnam, he stated he even made up stuff to stop the torturing. Never in my life did I think a great veteran like John McCain would sell his soul and vote for that sort of torture technique. Sad to say, it says he would lie about anything in order to suck it up to the far right, and to me, that makes him totally unqualified to be President. Sad but true for this great military hero who endured so much in Vietnam. But given the Fife Symington situation, and the Keating 5 mess. perhaps I had a very idealized perception and now the REAL McCain has shown up.

[HakimKutta]

Poor fellow, he's obviously confused about what is and what is not torture as the tentacles of senility start their slow but inexorable captivity of his rational mind. We shouldn't be angry or make fun of him, treatment is available and there are many fine old folks home in his state of Arizona. Those 5 years in the cage have taken their toll on this noble warrior so let us all think of him in our meditations and perhaps Huck can say a little prayer for his recovery...

[CarlyCorday]

Oh, I just noticed there is something to READ along with the video. OK. Well, let ex-P.O.W. McCain keep doing all this to please the people who didn't even make him the frontrunner, while jabbing his elbow in the faces of those who put him ahead, until he paints himself into the very corner he obviously belongs in.

This is Washington. Our own senators are doing the same things to us, doing it every day, and completely getting away with it. McCain hasn't yet won the office he's running for, so he WON'T get away with it. He needs to learn to do this stuff AFTER he wins! He could learn some of that from his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They are the best.

[klandish]

Unbelievable. Near suicidal!

[CarlyCorday]

I don't get it. In the video, McCain is condemning torture and waterboarding (making me wish he could only be that sane and smart about everything else). When does he do the flip-flop?

[morticia]

he voted against the BAN on Waterboarding!

[ReadALot]

Boy! That is some flip flop from the Straight Talk Express to the Double Talk Express. He is quoted as saying "BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN." I say SHAME, SHAME, SHAME.

[jqcitizen]

Changing ones opinion of something is fine. After all, in this country execution is considered, by some, to be cruel. But even the form of execution has evolved from hanging and firing squad, to electric chair, to gas chamber and now even lethal injection might be considered, by the court, to be cruel punishment.

What I fail to understand is that, how a man such as McCain, can now honestly say that waterboarding is acceptable. What caused such a big switch in this short period of time?

[saami]

John McCain is a liar. No more straight talk express. He will do anything and say anything to get elected. He is sucking up to the conservative base that loves torture and war. So much for his being an individual who thinks for himself. He has no principles. What we suspected all along...liar, liar, pants on fire.

[Teritt]

McCain switched to get Romney's delegates. Like all true Republicans, he puts power above principles.

[gopindrag]

If I'm campaigning against McCain, I quote "100 more years in Irag" and McCain singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb, Bomb, bomb Iran" as a voice over to the picture of McCain wrapping his arms around Bush and kissing Bush's ass, I mean, Bush's cheek.

[Pjsandiego]

The media should wake up to the flim flam that is being perpetrated on the American public with this guy. The Rush Limbaughs are only challenging his conservative credentials so that people will later be mislead that somehow this guy is middle of the road. He is not. He would still have this country in Viet Nam. He thinks war is the answer. He will say and do anything to become elected. He blatantly misquoted Romney during the Florida election, hired the same campaign counselor that had created the "he fathered a black baby" ad's in South Carolina in 2000; he's flipped on the Bush tax cuts, torture and about everything else imaginable. He is in fact an old guy so filled up with his own self importance that he thinks that anyone that disagrees with him should be treated as some kind of upstart. He's one dangerous candidate but he ain't no straight shooter!

[ihavenobias]

Seriously, when is the mainstream media going to stop referring to this guy as a "maverick"? I understand why he earned the title initially, but that time has long since passed.

In addition to this torture vote, he also voted this week help give Telecom companies retroactive immunity, thereby ultimately shielding the Bush administration from investigation. Does a "maverick" enjoy helping to break the law and trample the Constitution?

Not to mention how back in 2000 (give or take) he referred to Jerry Falwell and his ilk as "agents of intolerance". Great, I agreed with him. Except that years later he found himself kissing Falwell's ass and speaking at his school.

Again I ask, does that sound like a maverick?

The media is apparently so lazy and stubborn that they just can't bring themselves to write a new narrative...they prefer to dust off the old one that's already written.

TheYoungTurks.com

[DemandTruth]

The very last reason we've been given for the whole mess in Iraq (after all the others turned out to be lies) was that Sadaam was a brutal tyrant who treated his own people with brutality and distrust, and did terrible things to the people of other countries. That he TORTURED people. For this we had to invade his country and take him out. Okay. That's ONE reason I'd be willing to consider as not totally based on lies (although the weapons he used to brutalize his people were sold to him by US!).

Now we see half of our own country (well, okay 1/3) championing TORTURE! Legalizing and institutionalizing TORTURE! Cheering TORTURE! And we see our own brutal tyrant taking away our rights, illegally spying on us, and brutalizing peoples of other countries.

I'm sorry, but every day I see less and less difference between George W Bush and Sadaam Hussein. And that means less and less difference between a brutal tyrant and the American People who enable him.

RIP America 2000.

[PTTY]

John McCain is Hillary and Bill's BEST FRIEND. They share the same Iraq WAR vote costing Billions and Billions of our money while losing thousands of lives. Hillary is the reason our economy is tanking. When Hillary says Barack has no plan, its their code word. She knows her WAR Vote and her husband has cost jobs to be lost and our economy is in shambles.
Our infrastructure is crumbling, who knows when a Bridge may collapse when we are crossing.

Yet Hillary says the economy is her thing, yes it belongs to her, she voted for this WAR and our declining economy is the direct result of Hillary and John McCain's Vote.
It seems the Press is scared to say this about her Vote on the War because they will be labeled as picking on Her as a woman.

The Clintons' Terror Pardons
By DEBRA BURLINGAME
February 12, 2008; Page A17

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277819085260827.html?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.128055

Obama need to read

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aaad0724-dd13-4ffa-810b-d5d3220ff055

[jpshotwheels]

Obama and Hillary should jump on this right now.

[turnpiketramp]

they did not even vote on the bill...

[Dari]

This is just another SAD, SAD example of how power can corrupt. It is disheartening to see Senator McCain, someone who had always had his own values SELL himself, and the country short. And, TOTALLY kiss goodbye the Independent vote.

So, in order to 'secure' the vote of the right wing of his party, Senator McCain now caves into voting that waterboarding is OK.

And, changes his stance from the Bush Tax Cuts being "immoral" to making the Bush tax cuts permenant & the 'right' thing to do when the country's deficit has NEVER been higher.

And, of course, via occupation, allow the Bush Cheney Rumsfield Iraq war continue until we Americans 'secure' a victory. (Of course, by then, we won't have a country left. The money which will be need to be borrowed to FINANCE this war/occupation from the Arabs & the Chinese will bankrupt our country; and the USA will become a 3rd world nation).

What a legacy that Senator McCain wants to leave BOTH his & our children and grandchildren.

[sturgis54]

Well... there goes the Straight Talk Express, off the tracks again (this will be regular occurrence for the next nine months). In explaining his current failure to vote that waterboarding is illegal, McCain employed typical doublespeak...
"We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures. I believe that waterboarding is illegal and should be banned," he said.
OK, Senator... which is it? You're fine with the CIA using waterboarding and other "extra measures" or you think it is illegal and should be banned? Earth to Mr. Straight Talk... in whose reality are these consistent positions? If you think that waterboarding is illegal and should be banned (and lord knows, no one in Congress should understand the realities of torture better than you...) then your vote the other day had to be IN FAVOR of banning CIA torture techniques, not against. McCain is a classic flip-flopper who, it is well documented will say and do anything to curry favor with those he wants to vote for him. The country simply cannot endure another presidency built on lies, unethical behavior, and lack of regard for the rule of law.

[hmmmmm]

Flip flop flip flop flip flop. . .

reckon the repub's will regret ever introducing that phrase into the lexicon?

[LittleBrother]

Hey, wasn't Kid Shelleen's (fka Maverick) big claim to fame that he was Resolutely Standing Against Legitimizing Torture, and thus heroically defying the War Criminal-in-Chief and his own party?

I guess I missed the "unless crowded by circumstances" disclaimer.

[usaempire]

The american regime has been using torture against its enemies for a long time.Perhaps it is healthier that you are now debating it rather than simply denying the fact.But is there another advanced country where such a debate would be necessary?

[GeoNorth]

Maybe Mr. McCain can't believe that American's really want change. The change we want is leaders with principles who will stick with those principles. Saying what you think the public wants to hear is a sure way of getting ignored this year. Ask Mitt.