McCain redux

In the 2000 Republican primary, the party establishment backed George Bush over John McCain, so the venom came out heavily against McCain. Dubya's campaign claimed McCain was a traitor (lie), had an illegitimate black child (lie) and was gasp a liberal (opinion, but meant to scare "the base"). The truth is that John McCain was a patriotic soldier who spent 4 horrible years as a prisoner of war, where he was tortured. The Republican Party had no problem with trashing him anyway.

In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP smear campaign similarly "swift boated" John Kerry, spreading vicious lies trying to convince people that this bona-fide war HERO was actually a cowardly traitor. McCain spoke out against his own party's tactics on this, and called it "dishonest and dishonorable."

So, one would think that John McCain would not be particularly inclined to embrace dubya, those campaign tactics, or US torturing of prisoners who may or may not have any charges against them. You'd be wrong on all 3 counts.

McCain hired Terry Nelson as his campaign manager. Since his fame and expertise came from the lying smear campaign against John Kerry, one would presume that this kind of tactic is what McCain most desires in his own campaign.

As a Senator, McCain authored a piece of legislation that flatly says that "The United States of America does not torture". There was a nice ceremony with him and Bush hugging, smiling and signing it into law. Here's the catch, this law states that any technique used on people detained by US forces will not be called torture, even if it is. Oh, it gets better. The law specifically says that dubya can legally order torture techniques, and there is no limit has to how many people can be tortured, nor how long this torturing can last. So, what the law does is change the definition of the word "torture", and that's it. This is clearly an immoral and deceitful thing for any Bushie to do, but for McCain to be part of this is simply a higher level of immorality - further illustrating what he'll do to get elected.