Tag: Election 08

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McCain flip-flops on Torture and approves Waterboarding

You would think for a person that spent 5 1/2 years as a POW (three of which he spent in solitary confinement), being tortured with nonstop brutal beatings, refusal of medial attention and other technique; he would come to the conclusion that torture is probably a bad thing. If McCain was as strong a POW as he claims that all this torture did not break him, and he did not revile any secret information about his father or the war efforts, then you can conclude that torture doesn’t work from personal experience right?

Here’s his stance on this issue in June 2007 where he says “There’s no excuse for it”, “It’s not in keeping for what America is supposed to be”:


Today, the Senate brought the Intelligence Authorization Bill to the floor, which contained a provision from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) establishing one interrogation standard across the government. The bill requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.

However today, McCain maintains that the Army Field manual needs to allow more latitude for torture techniques to acquire secrets from detainees. [NY Times article on Senate pass of Ban]

Maverick Fails The Test: McCain Votes Against Waterboarding Ban [Thinkprogress.org]

For someone who has been so strong against torture and then to flip on this for a political reason (to stand with his party on pro-torture) shows a sharp disregard for human rights as well as a big gash in his integrity to stand by what he personally believes in.

Politics before country, ethics, morals and what is right, is that right McCain? The double-talk express is picking up steam folks! Of course the torture worked against him in Vietnam, so maybe this is really why he’s changing his tune.

UPDATE (3.10.2008) – Ok so this weekend’s 60 Minutes has McCain on for an interview and within this he explicitly states that waterboarding is torture. Is this a case where his public policy is different than his political practice or just a casualty of the political process where politicians vote for bills with pieces that hold policy against their beliefs but sacrifice those for totality of the bill… either way both are wrong. Here’s his whole interview:

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Is it experience, tenure or neither you need for Presidency?

What is experience? Much of the Hilll campaign against Obama is that he doesn’t have the experience and that her tenure in the big House is a big advantage to her credibility as the future president of the US (“I was in the White House for 8 years.” – HRC). Well yeah, and so has the Pastry Chef! (per Dick Morris, Political Strategist) Does that give the chef an equal opportunity to run for president? OR any more credibility for that matter to manage any major restaurant in the country? No it does not.

From what I understand, Hill was a private practice partner for a law firm in AR and then soon the first lady of Arkansas with Bill when he became Gov. Not the demure 1st Lady, she was unique in her role and soon became a mother with the birth of Chelsea. With the fall out of Bill from Gov, she went into the attack roll, sharpening her teeth with personal attacks against Bill’s opponents and helping him rise up again. By not baking cookies she did contribute to Bill becoming the 42nd President of the ISA. When she became First Lady, she campaigned for woman’s/human rights, woman abuse, expanding child care, breast cancer research, teen pregnancy prevention, and expanding child adoption rates. Her primary political experience came with her US Senatorship of NY after 2000. Sure she has a lot of friends, rubbing elbows with Bill’s cronies but do those “relationships” make her any more experienced at the job or even able to lead our country like you as a citizen want it to be?

On comparison of tenure and experience with GWB – and not to compare the two in any way – George W. Bush, only served six years as the Governor of Texas before his presidency. Of course we as American’s should have looked harder at his failures to understand how he was going to turn out: He was a C student (transcripts and he’s even quoted as saying: “For all you C students out there, it’s amazing what can happen to you if you keep working hard.”) and had numerous failed businesses.

Previous presidents have been governors, or had a longer terms in the Senate or House, before taking office, than Obama. Have all of these experiences prepare those presidents to operate within the system, or to actually do something about changing the system. Obama has 11 years experience in public office (Illinois State senate and US Senator) which is much more than Hillary’s 6 years as US Senator and being House Mom in the White House.

Obama services on the Foreign Relations committee in the US Senate and he is the Chair of the Subcommittee on European Relations and serves on the Subcommittees on African Affairs; East Asia and Pacific Affairs; and International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection. Hillary is not involved in any foreign relations committees.

“Well, Abraham Lincoln served two years in the U.S.House,
and seemed to do all right.”
~Newt Gingrich, commenting on Obama’s experience

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Do your beliefs really match your candidate?

Take this 11 question poll to find out what you truly believe fits the candidate you have selected for 08:

Select a candidate Quiz

After going through this myself, it seems that based on the issues that are important to me, the candidate that best fits my views is Dennis Kucinich. Wow… I never knew…. 2nd to that is Obama.

UPDATE: The quiz has been updated with 3 more questions (14 now total). After running this again, my views match up with Obama then Hillary. What I didn’t know is that Hillary disagrees with most candidates that teachers should be paid by performance. I can’t understand this. The better a teacher is at getting through to students, the better those students will progress in their education careers; hence they should be rewarded for this as well as encouraged to work harder at getting their students to learn. Ron Paul is the candidate that I most disagree with of them all…