The McCain Amendment: Expected Exception

[annabanana]

March 4, 2006

The McCain Amendment: Expected Exception

The Torture "Ban" was expected to do nothing and did.

By theBhc

A few months ago, liberals were falling all over themselves about John McCain and the putative tough stance he took on his amendment that would supposedly ban torture of detainees held by US forces. But this amendment did not exist in a legislative vacuum, and a few of us warned that the McCain amendment would likely do very little, that the entire torture ban charade was indeed just that, a show put on to demonstrate McCain's ostensible strong moral character. McCain himself knew his showboating would not result in any de facto change of detainee policy and his voting for the Graham-Levin amendment demonstrated his fealty to disasterous White House policy rather than any "moral code."

Well, it now appears that the possibility of McCain's amendment doing "very little" was overstating the case. The Bush administration is now arguing against the ban and doing so with another contemporaneous amendment that McCain himself happily voted into law.

I wonder now if all those apparently clueless lefties who thought the White House had "backed down" on the McCain amendment, or who had thought that McCain's "strong stance" against the Bush administration was just awesome, might be a little bit chagrined by this news:

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.
Now, at first glance, this administration argument appears to directly contradict the text of the McCain amendment, which says,
(a) IN GENERAL. --No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
And,
(a) IN GENERAL.--No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
That is clear language, to be sure. And Gitmo is certainly a "Department of Defense facility." But, how can they argue this? one must surely ask, unless, of course, you know about the Graham-Levin amendment. Because that is exactly what is being now employed in this case.

- more -


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_thebhc_060304_the_mccain_amendment.htm




Authors Website: http://www.boneheadcompendium.com

Authors Bio: An astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, Ken lives in Baltimore, where he devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media. Beer also helps this. He authors Anything They Say and The Bonehead Compendium.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Repeat after me: McCain is old guard and he'd kiss Bush on the lips

if he had to.

[acmejack]

2. The lips? TBC, you are much kinder than I

Was thinking of an orifice 180 degrees removed from the lips which Mr. McCain would rush to kiss. Perhaps I am merely an old cynic at this point, I certainly feel jaded.