PROGRESS: The excitement of the primaries has obscured McCain's equivocation on torture
tbp Mon Feb 18, 2008 at 01:46:24 PM GMT 
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The real McCain
The excitement of the primaries has obscured the Republican frontrunner's equivocation on torture
By Ken Gude
18 February 2008
Progress Online
One of the most encouraging developments of this presidential campaign was that it looked like the United States had begun to turn the page on the disastrous detainee policies of the Bush administration. With so much attention focused on the Republican and Democratic nominating contests, President Bush was almost an afterthought. Furthermore, Super Tuesday narrowed the field of candidates with any chance of becoming president to three—Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain—all of whom had advocated closing Guantanamo and banning torture. It seemed we were at the beginning of the end of this sad chapter in American history.
Yet not to be outdone, the Bush administration jumped back onto the front pages with more controversy. Slipped in amid all the excitement of Super Tuesday was the stunning admission from the CIA Director Michael Hayden that the United States had used waterboarding on three detainees in 2002 and 2003. That was quickly followed with last week’s news that six Guantanamo detainees, including at least one that was waterboarded, would soon be charged in military commissions and will likely face the death penalty if convicted.
More than six years into its existence, Guantanamo has had more suicides than convictions, with only David Hicks’ plea bargain to show for all the resources thrown at the prison, and he is already out of jail. The speedy conclusion of that case was borne more out of political convenience than a sound adjudicative system, and the commissions have not even held a successful arraignment as the first two cases brought before them were dismissed because of a technical flaw in the procedures. Now the Bush administration has chosen to proceed directly to the most difficult of all cases, those involving the prospect of capital punishment. They are recklessly rolling the dice in a completely untested and flawed system in the first trials of individuals implicated in the mass murder of 3,000 people ...
