Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Are both President Bush and Senator McCain pro- hypocrisy re: torture

Senator McCain recently sponsored a bill that passed the Senate 90-7. The bill, among other things, prohibits torture. President Bush had opposed the bill.

McCain postition seems to be that we should have clear language saying that under no circumstance do we torture anyone, even unlawful combatants, even terrorists. However, if we have reason to believe that a given terrorist has information that would be vital in defending against an imminent terrorist attact, the persons holding him should use torture to extract the information and await a Presidential pardon. Hmmm.

Bush's position seems to be that the US has a no torture policy but we don't need legislation to prohibit torture.

It seems to me that the word that defines these positions is "contradictory" or "partly contradictory". The problem with calling it 'hypocrisy' is that I am not sure we really know what the Senator and the President are thinking (you can't compare thinking and advocacy without knowing the first of these).