What's It Gonna Be, Maverick?

(bumped)

This kind of came out of nowhere yesterday.

Tomorrow, the Intelligence Authorization Conference Report will come to the Senate floor. Section 327 of the bill establishes one interrogation standard for the entire U.S. government. This would effectively end torture by requiring that the intelligence community abide by the standards articulated in the Army Field Manual.

In order to attempt to block the ban on torture, Republicans may filibuster the bill or raise a point of order, claiming the torture provision violates the rules of the Senate. If the Parliamentarian agrees, we will be forced to try and waive the point of order. Either way we need 60 votes.

Already some Republicans have signaled they will side with us - however we need more.

Now is the time to take a stand against torture.

There's a petition at the link, but ideally this would have come up after an week or so of debate, rallies on the Capitol Steps, etc.

This is useful, however, because of the Republican nominee for President. John McCain has been "outspoken" on the subject of torture. He authored the amendment that supposedly "banned" torture, until Bush authored a signing statement invalidating it. He's made a lot of pretty talk about how torture is wrong, drawing on his own experience. Well, now he can prove it. He can take the floor today and vote to put the intelligence community under the same rules as the military, abiding by the Army Field Manual.

As an example, he could write to the President, the leader of his party, something like Hillary Clinton did yesterday:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today called on President Bush to remove his threat to veto the Fiscal Year 2008 Intelligence Authorization Bill, which applies the U.S. Army standards for interrogation to U.S. intelligence agencies and contractors, and bans the practice of waterboarding. In a letter to the President, Senator Clinton urged him to live up to the standards that America has promoted around the world.

“Our nation and our President must strongly and unequivocally stand for the rule of law—especially when we are under threat from an enemy that embodies the antithesis of our values,” Senator Clinton wrote. “In the process of accomplishing what is essential for our security, we must hold onto our values and set an example we can point to with pride, not shame.”

It's really pretty simple. The White House is comparing these trials of terror suspects to the trials at Nuremberg. Yet they used torture to gather the evidence that will be used in these trials, the same kind of torture that was PROSECUTED at Nuremberg. If John McCain has any free thought left, he would make the obvious choice and vote to restore moral authority in this country, and vote to ban waterboarding and any other form of torture.

So what will he do?

My money's on him skipping the vote.

UPDATE: Just to show that I'm not reflexively opposed to everything Dianne Feinstein does, she is on the floor of the Senate right now leading the fight on this issue, and it looks like she'll get passage in the Senate on this today. That's very significant.

UPDATE II: McCain just voted no. Mr. Straight Talk, Mr. Maverick, Mr. "Torture is Wrong," just voted against banning torture. So did Warner and Scottish Haggis Specter. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith voted with all the Democrats but Ben Nelson. It's going to pass but not with a veto-proof majority... final vote is 51-45.